Last week, France’s highest appeals court upheld an earlier ruling that the man who killed a Jewish woman in her sixties in her Paris flat in 2017 will not stand trial. The court’s decision said that Kobili Traoré had used a considerable quantity of marijuana and was therefore “too high”‘ to be held criminally responsible for his actions.
Although the court acknowledged the antisemitic nature of the murder — Traoré shouted “Allahu Akbar” before throwing Sarah Halimi, 65, out of a third-floor window and proclaimed that he had “killed the Shaitan [loosely translated as devil or demon]” — it nevertheless accepted the defense’s claims.
The decision sent shockwaves throughout France’s Jewish community, which has found itself repeatedly targeted by jihadists in recent years.
Indeed, the murder was so extreme that French President Emmanuel Macron took the highly unusual step last year of publicly calling on the court system to bring the killer to justice, saying that there was a “need for a trial.” On Sunday, Macron clearly troubled by this blatant miscarriage of justice, proposed changing French law in order to ensure such an occurrence never happens again.
Nevertheless, international media outlets initially elected to turn a blind eye to the court ruling. In the hours and days after the news broke, it received no coverage whatsoever on any of the world’s biggest news sites.
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HonestReporting Mounts Social Media Campaign
In response, HonestReporting on Thursday started a social media campaign to spread awareness of the Kobili’s acquittal. A day later, we published a media critique calling out news outlets for ignoring the acquittal of the clearly antisemitic murderer and asking readers to contact news organizations to demand coverage. All the while, we continued flooding Twitter with content related to the case.
The French court system is literally allowing a man to get away with murder.
It is unconscionable that virtually the entire media have turned a blind eye to this gross injustice.#SarahHalimi #JewishLivesMatterhttps://t.co/g33ibL1MUN
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) April 16, 2021
The Media Response
The day after HonestReporting published its critique, The New York Times finally broke the media’s silence by publishing an article titled, “Highest French Court Rules Killer of Jewish Woman Cannot Stand Trial.”
And on Sunday, British newspaper The Daily Mail similarly produced a story titled, “Outrage as France’s highest court rules a killer ‘who screamed Allahu Akbar while throwing a Jewish woman from her balcony to her death’ cannot be tried because he was psychotic from cannabis at the time.” The same day, news website Insider.com published an article too: “Neighbor who tossed an elderly Jewish woman off a balcony while yelling ‘Allahu Akbar’ avoids trial because he smoked weed.”
While the articles were only published three and four days after the court passed judgment, HonestReporting commends these news outlets for moving to document the event. Better late than never.
With the help of our article and social media campaign that reached hundreds of thousands of people, the story of Sarah Halimi got the international attention it deserved.
