Chief Rabbi Lau: Halimi case ‘an abominable injustice,’ calls for retrial

He also cited the Talmudic dictum that “He who is merciful to the cruel will end up being cruel to the merciful,” and said a true judge had to demonstrate “resoluteness” towards evil.

By JEREMY SHARON
Updated: APRIL 28, 2021 13:51
Protesters gather in Jerusalem against the French ruling in the Sarah Halimi murder case, April 25, 2021. (photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM)
Protesters gather in Jerusalem against the French ruling in the Sarah Halimi murder case, April 25, 2021.
(photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM)
Chief Rabbi David Lau has condemned the recent decision by the French Court of Cassation absolving the murderer of Sarah Halimi of criminal responsibility for his actions, and called for him to be retried.
Writing in a letter to the Halimi family on Tuesday, Lau said that he was “outraged” by the decision and cited a passage from the Biblical Book of Ecclesiastes declaring “I saw under the sun, in the place of justice, that wickedness was there.”
In April 2017, Kobili Traoré, a 27-year-old Muslim man, violently beat Halimi, his 65-year-old Jewish neighbor, while screaming "Allah Akbar" (God is great) along with antisemitic slogans, before throwing her out of the window of her third-floor apartment to her death.
A lower court ruled in December 2019 that Traore was not criminally responsible for his actions due to his intake of cannabis before the attack supposedly compromised his “discernment,” or consciousness.
The Court of Cassation, the highest court of appeal in France, upheld the lower court decision, ruling that the law as it stands does not allow for discernment between mental impairment due to disease or the voluntary intake of narcotics.
There is no possibility of any further criminal proceedings against Traore now that the Court of Cassation has issued its ruling.  
“A law must be impartial and inclusive; whoever puts his views and opinions into understanding the law and uses them to express them is a sinner to the truth and turns the law into a distortion of justice and the place of justice into the place of evil,” wrote Lau in his letter.
The chief rabbi also cited the Talmudic dictum that “He who is merciful to the cruel will end up being cruel to the merciful,” and said a true judge has to demonstrate “resoluteness” towards evil.
“I am with you in your emotions, and cry out the cry of Sarah, may God avenge her blood,” continued Lau.
“I call on whoever is responsible for this decision to weigh anew this decision and put the murderer on trial," he wrote.

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“I am convinced that He who dwells on high sees the abominable injustice and he will send comfort from the Heavens to the double pain that you have experienced, the two times that Sarah, may God avenge her blood, was murdered: once by the criminal and a second time by those who acquitted him of his crimes.”


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