Murder of Mireille Knoll: the 2 suspects charged for anti-semitic crime

The murder of Mireille Knoll was committed on March 23, 2018 in the 11th district of Paris.

This 85-year-old Holocaust survivor, who had Parkinson’s disease, was brutally stabbed at her home on Philippe Auguste Avenue before her body was partially burned. This crime took place a year after Sarah Halimi, a 60-year-old Jewish man who was also murdered in her home. A few days after the murder of the octogener, a white march, marred by incidents, was organized bringing together thousands of people including personalities, politicians and clerics.

In the face of this brutal and anti-Semitic act, public opinion rose to raise the issue of racism. Indeed, the main suspect in the Sarah Halimi case was found to be criminally irresponsible and this should not happen again. The trial of Yacine Milhoub and Alex Carrimbus is therefore the opposite of that of Sarah Halimi.

In this case, the 2 suspects, Yacine Milhoub and Alex Carrimbus have different profiles. The first 30-year-old knew his victim from childhood as he had grown up in the building and the second 24-year-old was a marginal youth with a psychiatric history; they met in prison.

On March 29, 2018, the young neighbor of the old lady offers her friend to spend the afternoon at her house. He would have wanted to break the apartment, but things turned out. Called by his friend a psychopath, he said that he had drunk a bottle of porto and took himself against his neighbor, who he accused of denouncing him for a sexual assault on his sickguard’s daughter. He then took Mireille to his room where he slit her by shouting « Allahou Akbar, » according to Alex. The wound in the neck makes one think of a jihadist execution by throwing a blood-drain, but there is no guarantee of it. It is therefore very difficult to share the alcohol share of personal resentment and hatred of Jews.

Since the beginning of the case, and the reconstruction, the two defendants have advanced diametrically opposed versions and have rejected responsibility for the crime, only their presence at the time of the death of Mireille Knoll had been recognized.

In pre-trial detention, they are sent back, 2 years after the crime, to the courts for « aggravated theft », degradation by means that are dangerous for persons and « willful homicide with aggravating circumstances » (act committed on « vulnerable person » and because of the victim’s religion). The decision to try the two men for an anti-Semitic crime corresponds to the prosecutor’s requisitions.

In addition, Yacine Milhoub’s mother, Zoulika K., who lived on the 7th floor of the building, is also sent to the courts for « destroying documents or objects relating to a crime or crime in order to prevent the demonstration of the truth ». She was suspected of having cleaned the knife with which the octogenarian was stabbed.

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VERONIQUE YANG

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