Murder of Mireille Knoll: the trial opened before the assizes in Paris

Gwladys Laffitte, with AFP 6:25 p.m., October 26, 2021

The affair had provoked indignation and commotion in France and abroad.

The trial of two men accused of the anti-Semitic murder of Mireille Knoll, an old Jewish lady killed at home in 2018, opened Tuesday in Paris.

Yacine Mihoub, 31, glasses on his nose and vest on his back, and Alex Carrimbacus, 25, wearing a blue shirt, took their places in the small courtroom of the courthouse.

The two men, who had met in prison, blame themselves for the murder.

"It would take a miracle for the truth to come out of their mouths"

"It would take a miracle for the truth to come out of their mouths," said Me Gilles-William Goldnadel, lawyer for the sons of Mireille Knoll, before entering the room with his clients. But the "file is damning", he said, speaking of a case of "villainous anti-Semitism". "They are monsters," the son, Daniel Knoll, told reporters. "We are waiting for a very severe verdict. We would like all the crazy people in France to know that they will be severely condemned," he said. After the call of witnesses, President Franck Zientara began to read the report.

On March 23, 2018, firefighters were called in for a fire in a modest building in eastern Paris.

On the second floor, they discover the partially charred body of Mireille Knoll, across her medical bed, legs dangling.

The 85-year-old woman, who has Parkinson's disease and cannot move on her own, was stabbed 11 times, including in the throat.

The investigation quickly revealed that Yacine Mihoub and Alex Carrimbacus were there.

But what happened in the small apartment remains unclear, so much the versions of the two men are opposed.

"Money plan"

Alex Carrimbacus, a homeless marginal with a psychiatric history, maintains that Yacine Mihoub offered to join him for a "money plan". Yacine Mihoub, son of the neighbor who had known Mireille Knoll since childhood and had a series of Port glasses with the old lady, assures him that he had simply offered to come and have a "good time". On the spot, according to Alex Carrimbacus, the discussion escalates when Yacine Mihoub accuses Mireille Knoll of having "thrown" him and sent him to prison. He carries her to his room, "slitting her throat" to cries of "Allah Akbar".

Yacine Mihoub maintains that Alex Carrimbacus immediately sought to steal Mireille Knoll, asking on her arrival if she was "armored".

He piles up furs and knick-knacks.

Then Yacine Mihoub hears a cry in the room, he sees Alex Carrimbacus stabbing the old lady.

Each accuses the other of having decided to set fire.

Two versions "not very credible", will estimate the investigators, whose task is complicated by the particularly developed propensity of Yacine Mihoub and Alex Carrimbacus to "lie" and "to manipulate".

The two men had been convicted several times for theft and violence.

Yacine Mihoub's mother, accused of having cleaned the murder knife, appears, free, by their side.

A murder with an anti-Semitic character

The investigating judges chose to retain the anti-Semitic character on the basis of a discussion reported by Alex Carrimbacus. He said he "thought he heard" Yacine Mihoub "talking about the financial means of the Jews, their good situation", and Mireille Knoll intervening "to explain that not all Jews had a good situation". The investigation also showed "the ambivalence of Yacine Mihoub vis-à-vis Islamist terrorism which notably advocates anti-Semitism", noted the judges, specifying however that no one had ever heard him utter anti-Semitic remarks. .

"The anti-Semitic motive only exists because (Alex Carrimbacus) tried to draw a motive" and the judges "did not have the courage to drop this charge under public pressure," said before the hearing one of his lawyers, Me Charles Consigny. "Unlike Yacine Mihoub", Alex Carrimbacus "had no reason to blame Mireille Knoll", for his part estimated his lawyer Karim Laouafi.

The drama, which occurred a year after the murder in Paris of Sarah Halimi, a Jewish sexagenarian thrown from her balcony, had led to a great "white march" in Paris and revived the debate on a "new anti-Semitism" linked to the Islamization of some. neighborhoods.

Mireille Knoll was killed "because she was Jewish" had proclaimed President Emmanuel Macron, an indignation shared in particular in the United States and in Israel, in the face of the fate of this woman who, as a child, had fled Paris in 1942 to escape the anti-Semitic raids.

The trial is scheduled until November 10.