• The charred body of Mireille Knoll was discovered in her apartment, larded with 11 stab wounds, in March 2018.

  • The two main suspects are accusing each other, but an exhibit on file last week could turn the story around.

  • Both defendants face life imprisonment.

It only took a few moments for the firefighters, on March 23, 2018, to understand that the fire on which they were intervening was used to disguise a crime. That of Mireille Knoll, an octogenarian of Jewish faith, survivor of the Shoah, killed by eleven stab wounds on her bed, in her apartment in the 11th arrondissement of Paris. More than three years later, two men are tried for "murder on a vulnerable person, committed because of the religion of the victim", a crime punishable by life imprisonment. The mother of one of them also appears for "destruction of evidence", suspected of having cleaned the knife stained with blood.

Almost immediately, suspicion fell on the son of a neighbor of Mireille Knoll: Yacine Mihoub, now 32 years old.

Several members of the victim's family saw him on the day of the tragedy, at home, drinking port in the morning.

A presence that worries them, not only because of his behavior, but also because of the liabilities between them.

The latter, very unfavorably known to justice, was convicted in 2017 for a sexual assault committed at Mireille Knoll, on the daughter of his housekeeper.

But her relatives agree that the old lady shows no signs of worry and seems rather happy to have the company.

Two contradictory versions

Quickly, investigators also become convinced that Alex Carrimbacus, 25, a friend of detention, without a fixed address, joined him at Mireille Knoll's in the course of the afternoon. Throughout the investigation, the two men did not cease to accuse each other. If Yacine Mihoub admits having sent for his friend, he assures us that it is the latter who took the initiative of the burglary, asking if the octogenarian was "armored", then who stabbed him before attempting to set fire . Alex Carrimbacus affirms the opposite: according to his version, Yacine Mihoub made him come to Mireille Knoll by making him dangle a small job before making him understand that it was a burglary.

He maintains that his friend was angry with the old lady considering that she had "denounced" him in the sexual assault case. He claims to have heard Yacine Mihoub exclaim "she paid for what she did" after the latter stabbed her several times in the throat while shouting "Allahu Akbar". "We are talking about eleven stab wounds, a relentlessness, while my client did not know her," insists Me Karim Laouafi, adviser to Alex Carrimbacus. Neither the confrontation nor the reconstitution made it possible to determine the roles of each. "To tell the truth, for a long time now my clients have had a fairly precise idea of ​​who is the boss in this case," says Gilles-William Goldnadel, lawyer for the Knoll family. Mihoub is described, including by his family, as a mythomaniac and violent man."

The murder weapon discovered?

Especially since a new document filed last week gave a completely different turn to the case before the opening of the trial. In November 2020, Mohamed Mihoub, Yacine's older brother, reported to the police a long knife he had just found behind his washing machine, while he was repairing a water leak. However, the murder weapon has never been found. If it is recorded in the file that after the death of Mireille Knoll, Yacine Mihoub spent the night at his brother's house, neither the DNA analyzes nor those of the two traces of blood found on the slide were however conclusive. "We still have to wonder: why the brother of one of the accused considered that the discovery of a knife, at his home, could have a link with this investigation, it is not trivial", insists the council of 'Alex Carrimbacus.Yacine Mihoub's lawyers did not respond to our requests.

The motive of the crime will also be at the heart of these three weeks of trial. In July 2020, the two investigating judges accepted the anti-Semitic nature of the murder, relying in particular on the statements of Alex Carrimbacus. The latter said he heard Yacine Mihoub say that the Jews had "financial means and a good situation". Expertises on the family computer revealed that a few days before the tragedy, the suspect had consulted sites evoking Israel, Palestine or Islamic sharia. In January 2015, after the

Charlie Hebdo

attacks

 and the HyperCacher, supervisors discovered in his cell books on Bin Laden, Mohammed Merah or jihad as well as inscriptions "the Kouachi brothers did not die for nothing", "A Coulibaly RIP" ... "We are not not in an intellectual anti-Semitism but rather villainous ”, estimates Gilles-William Goldnadel.

Justice

Murder of Mireille Knoll: Judges order antisemitic murder trial against two suspects

Paris

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  • Anti-semitism

  • Justice

  • Paris

  • Murder

  • Trial

  • Mireille Knoll