When the French Supreme Court decided that Kobili Traore, the Muslim who murdered 65-year-old Sarah Halimi, could not be subject to a criminal trial because at the time of the killing he was not in his right mind but high on cannabis, there was outrage in France. And there was worry, too, that the two killers of 85-year-old Mireille Knoll, Yasine Matoub and Alex Carrimbacus, might also be judged exempt from criminal prosecution, in similar fashion, because they, too, had been high on alcohol (Matoub) and crack cocaine (Carrimbacus) when Knoll was stabbed eleven times and then set on fire. They need worry no longer. Matoub has been sentenced to life imprisonment (France abolished the death penalty 40 years ago), for the murder, and Carrimbacus to 15 years, found guilty of “aggravated theft.” The “aggravated” part referred to the antisemitic belief of both men that “all Jews are rich,” and Knoll must therefore have been hiding her money. Neither Matoub nor Carrimbacus seem to have questioned why, if Knoll was rich, she lived in a low-income public housing project.
A report on the trial is here: “‘Justice Has Been Done’: Antisemitic Murderer of Holocaust Survivor Mireille Knoll Sentenced to Life Imprisonment by French Court,” by Ben Cohen, Algemeiner, November 13, 2021:
The murder trial that compelled France to confront the violent antisemitism in its midst came to a dramatic close on Wednesday, as a court in Paris sentenced one of the two men accused of the brutal killing of Mireille Knoll, an 85-year-old Holocaust survivor who suffered from Parkinson’s Disease, to life imprisonment.
Following almost ten hours of deliberation by the jury, 32-year-old Yacine Mihoub, a former neighbor of Knoll’s, was found guilty of murder aggravated by antisemitic hatred. The terms of Mihoub’s life sentence require that he serve a minimum of 22 years.
The second accused man, Alex Carrimbacus, Mihoub’s 25-year-old associate, was acquitted on the murder charge but found guilty of aggravated theft. The court sentenced him to a 15-year prison term.
Mihoub’s mother, Zoulikha Khellaf, separately received a three year prison sentence, with two years suspended, for having cleaned the knife used in the murder of Knoll — who was stabbed eleven times by Mihoub before her body was set on fire. Firefighters who arrived at her apartment in a Paris public housing project shortly after her murder on March 23, 2018 discovered her badly burned remains sprawled on the floor.
Throughout the trial, which began on Oct. 26, lawyers for the Knoll family stressed the antisemitic element behind the killing. A police investigation following Knoll’s death established that Mihoub was a regular visitor to Islamist and antisemitic websites, and was already known to the authorities for having praised the Kouachi brothers, Islamist terrorists who carried out the deadly attack against the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Jan. 2015.
When stabbing Mireille Knoll eleven times and then setting her alight, Mihoub was not in a drunken stupor, “out of his mind,” but very clearly was acting on the hate promoted in the Islamic and antisemitic websites he regularly visited. He had even praised the Kouachi brothers who had murdered the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists. Drunk or not, he was ready to kill a Jew, his hatred encouraged by the websites he visited. And Mireille Knoll was not only a Jew, but “rich” like all of them, even if she did live in a low-income housing project on 900 Euros a month.
Living alone in an apartment in the 11th arrondissement of Paris, Knoll had known Mihoub, who lived with his family in the same building, since his childhood. A petty criminal and alcoholic with previous convictions for drug dealing and violence, Mihoub had received his most recent prison sentence for sexually assaulting a minor in Mireille Knoll’s apartment — the 11-year-old daughter of her caregiver, who gave evidence against Mihoub at the trial on Monday.
Before he was arrested for murder, Mihoub lived by drug-dealing and street robbery, often accompanied by violence toward his victims. He was also a sexual predator and pedophile, who had sexually assaulted a young girl – the daughter of Knoll’s caregiver — right in Knoll’s apartment.
Following that assault, Mihoub had been banned from visiting the building where Knoll lived, but continued to do so. According to his testimony to the court, Mihoub had been visiting Knoll in the hours before her murder, drinking and having what he described as a “good time.” He called Carrimbacus, a drug addict whom he had befriended while in prison, and invited him to join them at Knoll’s apartment, where Mihoub had already consumed nearly an entire bottle of port.
The accounts of the two accused men as to what then transpired in Knoll’s apartment diverged sharply at this point. Mihoub tried to blame the killing on Carrimbacus, claiming that he had left his friend alone with Knoll for five minutes, during which time she was stabbed repeatedly and then robbed. But according to Carrimbacus, it was Mihoub who murdered Knoll during an argument in which he angrily insisted that Jews “have financial means and a good situation,” shouting the words “Allahu Akhbar” (“God is great’) as he plunged the knife into his victim.
Yes, that 85-year-old woman, who suffered from advanced Parkinson’s Disease and was the sole Jew left in the low-income housing project, in Mihoub’s view had “financial means and a good situation,” and he wasn’t going to let Knoll get away with her preposterous claim of being without when he demanded money. He’d punish her all right, by stabbing her, that “rich Jew,” eleven times and then, for good measure, by setting her body on fire. That would show her not to lie.
Prosecuting lawyers had argued throughout the trial that it was Mihoub who bore “sole responsibility for the particularly savage killing of Mrs. Knoll,” an act aggravated by his antisemitic prejudices. During his testimony, Mihoub did little to undermine this depiction. “I think if it had been a ‘Geraldine’ or a ‘Fatima,’ there wouldn’t have been so much noise,” he responded when questioned about antisemitism as a motive for the killing. [Meaning: as a Jew Knoll received special attention, which a Christian “Geraldine” or Muslim “Fatima” would not, Jews! Always the privileged ones!] On another occasion, he challenged the facts of the Holocaust, declaring, “One or two million dead, we don’t know. We can’t prove it. We weren’t there, neither you nor me.”
Mihoub undoubtedly learned his Holocaust denial from the antisemitic websites he so enjoyed visiting.
The court also heard how soon after the killing, Mihoub and Carrimbacus had visited a bar where, in the earshot of witnesses, Mihoub praised Amedy Coulibaly, the Islamist gunman who murdered four Jews at a kosher supermarket in eastern Paris in Jan. 2015, as a “good guy.” When this remark was raised at the trial, Mihoub doubled down, answering: “We are not born as terrorists. He was probably a good person before.”
Mihoub thinks Coulibaly was “probably a good person before” he decided to murder four Jews in cold blood. In the same way, Mihoub thinks of himself as a “good person” before alcohol so muddled his mind in Knoll’s apartment, that he had no idea what he was doing when he stabbed her eleven times and then set her on fire. Uh-huh. Mitoub was never a “good person.” He was always a moral monster, living by drug dealing and violent street crime, a pedophile who sexually assaulted a young girl. His mind was, and is, filled with antisemitic hate he picked up from the Internet and from other Muslims (what mosque did he attend? what did the imam preach in that mosque? shouldn’t the police take an interest?), his admiration reserved for other Muslim murderers of Jews, such as Amedy Coulibaly and the Kouachi brothers .
The hefty sentences handed down in the case of the Knoll murder contrasted acutely with the shock decision of France’s highest court last April to excuse another accused antisemitic murderer from a criminal trial.
The Court of Cassation decided that Kobili Traore — accused of killing 65-year-old Sarah Halimi during an antisemitic assault in her Paris apartment in April 2017 — could not be held as criminally responsible because of his heavy intake of cannabis in the hours before the murder. That decision led France’s main Jewish communal body, Crif, to state that “now in our country, we can torture and kill Jews with impunity.”
In the wake of Wednesday’s verdict, Daniel and Alain Knoll — Mireille Knoll’s two sons — declared themselves “relieved” by the jury’s decision….
Thankfully, this court did not accept the reasoning of the Court of Cassation (France’s highest court) in the case of Kobili Traore, who was held not criminally responsible for Sarah Halimi’s killing because he was in a “psychotic state” from cannabis. The prosecution in that case pointed out that as a longtime user of cannabis, Traore was long inured to its effects, and could not, consequently, have truly been in an out-of-control mental state. The Court of Cassation dismissed that argument. In the case of Mireille Knoll’s killers, there was worry that the same argument might again be accepted – that Mihoub was “out of his mind” because he was drunk, and Carrimbacus “out of his mind” because he was high on crack cocaine – and therefore, they could not be held criminally responsible. The worry turned out to be unfounded. The judges in the Knoll case accepted the argument that both Mihoub and Carrimbaccus were such regular users, Mihoub of alcohol, and Carrimbacus of crack cocaine, that they were able to function and think while under their influence. The “out of their minds” argument was given short shrift.
Earlier on Wednesday, the brothers [the sons of Mireille Knoll] announced that they had written to France’s education minister urging that March 23 — the day of their mother’s death — be named officially as “Mireille Knoll Day.” The letter pointed out that such a commemorative day would also be an opportunity to honor other French victims of political and religious extremism, such as Father Jacques Hamel, a Catholic priest murdered by two Islamists while in his church in July 2016; Lt. Col Arnaud Beltrame, a police officer murdered during a terrorist hostage seizure just one day after Knoll’s killing in March 2018; and Samuel Paty, a Paris secondary school teacher who was decapitated by an Islamist assailant in Oct. 2020….
This proposed “Mireille Knoll Day” is an excellent idea, a way to keep alive, and to reinforce, the collective memory of the French about the many victims in France of Muslim murderers. The list of those victims is long and will grow longer: Ilan Halimi, held prisoner and then tortured over several weeks, until he died of the wounds inflicted on him by a Muslim gang; the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists, headed by the magazine’s editor Stephane Charbonnier (“I prefer to die standing than to live on my knees”); the Jewish shoppers at a kosher supermarket; the 90 people who were murdered by Muslim gunmen at the Bataclan night club; the 40 people who were killed when three suicide bombers struck outside the Stade de France in Saint-Denis, during an international football match; the people sitting at crowded cafés and restaurants in Paris who were sprayed with gunfire; the French priest, Jacques Hamel, who was decapitated at his altar while saying Mass in Normandy; the heroic police officer Lt. Col. Arnaud Beltrame, who volunteered to take the place of a female civilian being held hostage by a Muslim terrorist, and was subsequently murdered by him; Rabbi Jonathan Sandler, and the three little children – his sons Aryeh (six) and Gabriel (3), and Myriam Monsenego (8) – who were murdered with him outside Ozah Hatorah, a Jewish school in Toulouse; the police commander Jean-Baptiste Salvaing and his partner, Jessica Schneider, both of whom were stabbed to death in Magnanville; Sarah Halimi, the 65-year-old retiree beaten to death and then thrown out the window of her third-floor apartment; Samuel Paty, the conscientious schoolteacher who dared to share with his class, as part of a discussion of free speech, a caricature of Muhammad. Let that list of victims – which can be expanded to include atrocities still to come — accompany the observances to be held at schools and government offices, and broadcast on radio and television, of “Mireille Knoll Day.”
Lest we forget, as Kipling wrote – lest we forget!
Westman says
22 years in the Prison Islamic Club is a Life Sentence? What are chances he will be out of prison in 11 years?
There was a murder in my (no capital punishment) state where the perpetrators literally discussed, among themselves, heard by victims, what additional mahem they could commit without extending their sentence, if caught – this turned out to be torture and rape.
gravenimage says
Yes–even life in prison seldom means anything like that in the “woke” West these days. Madness.
Frank Anderson says
I welcome correction whenever speaking/writing in error. It is my understanding from the first semester of law school in 1977 to this day IN THE US, that “voluntary intoxication” is not a defense and may be an aggravating factor to a criminal charge, particularly, for example, drunk driving. This judge would be overturned, I hope, on appeal and hopefully removed from the bench and even disbarred for such a travesty IN the US. France appears to render itself defenseless to the conquest that is ongoing. What happens to their nuclear weapons, missiles and bombers when that happens? And their nuclear plants, breeder reactors and industry?
gravenimage says
Yes–and especially of marijuana. It can certainly be abused, but I have *never* heard it having the effect of causing homicidal behavior.
Frank Anderson says
GI, “voluntary intoxication” is claimed by defense lawyers in an effort to reduce the crime to be convicted. “I was drunk and therefore not responsible for my actions!” It is not supposed to work that way. On the contrary, voluntary intoxication shows the defendant intended ALL the natural consequences that follow the decision to get drunk, whether from alcohol or drugs. Particularly in the case of car wrecks, deliberate decisions to impair judgement and reflexes show “depraved indifference” in some states, and “universal malice” in others, stepping up what might be a manslaughter charge to murder. All 3 cases discussed in the article show the defendants chose to be intoxicated, and are therefore under US law, which does not apply in France, guilty of murder.
It would be an entirely different fact IF the intoxication was forced or tricked without the defendant’s consent. There is a Law and Order episode where a drug was used without the person’s knowledge leading to a disastrous wreck.
gravenimage says
I know this, Frank–thank you. I just meant it is an especially absurd claim, since unlike alcohol re impairment of competance operating a motor vehicle, marijuana has never been proven to cause murderous behavior.
mortimer says
Such a lack of intellectual integrity! If any crime could be classified as a ‘HATE CRIME’, then the vicious anti-Semitic murder of Mireille Knoll is a textbook example.
There should be no ‘I WAS HIGH, YOUR HONOR’ defense.
Roland says
According to Guy Milière in
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17349/france-antisemitic-murder
“Anne Ihouelou (investigating judge in the Sarah Halimi case) is a member of the “Syndicat de la magistrature” (Magistrate’s Union), a militant left-wing organization with a record of supporting the actions of Islamic organizations.”
There were many irregularities in Judge Ihouelou’s handling of the case.
Keith O says
I fervently hope that every waking moment of their sentences is a waking hell on earth and that in their sleep they are tormented by the face and screams of Mireille Knoll.
These animals deserve nothing less.
Frank Anderson says
Keith, I WISH with equal fervor that your wish comes true. The problem for US, both of US, is it will not. According to their criminal conspiracy that we foolishly accept as a religion, what they did is noble, honorable and entitles them to direct access to paradise. PLEASE, I ask you, learn more about islam to understand what is hateful to us is not to any observant muslim. Some are just more careful in exposing their prayers and teaching than others.
Keith O says
Frank, I fully understand the twisted and demented philosophy behind Islam.
One of my tutors on the subject was a warrant officer in the Singaporean army who left the cult when he became aware of how it worked.
His insights were both enlightening and very disturbing.
I had been raised as a Catholic as my elders wanted me to gain knowledge of how our enemy thought and I understood the mindset behind the Vatican, now I am equally aware of the evil that is entrenched in the hearts and minds of Islamists.
Frank Anderson says
Keith, I never intend to belittle or insult anyone who does not richly deserve it. YOU DO NOT deserve any negative comment from me. I bought the “religion of peace” lie hook line and sinker for almost 7 years, and started to learn the truth as a result of Robert Spencer appearing on Glenn Beck’s Fox News show.
What I describe is my understanding from reading about 30 books and participating in many conversations since. I sincerely question whether you understand that what is repulsive to US, is attractive and pleasing to muslims.
My former Rabbi, a friend of more than 20 years, exploded when I questioned his false impression of islam which he was taught in Rabbinical school. Instead of following the Jewish teaching to question everything repeatedly and often, he locked himself in a lie.
What we accept second-hand from others is often tainted and short of the truth. Each time we learn more for ourselves and rely less on others, we come closer to knowing that which we need to prevail against a 1400 year old monster. Frank
gravenimage says
Keith, pious Muslims would likely be thrilled to experience the screams of their victims over and over.
Keith O says
True GI, but even the strongest minds can only withstand that sort of torment and resulting lack of sleep for so long.
I do hope that the path of torture of their minds is long and agonising.
gravenimage says
Alas, Keith, pious Muslims would not be apt to consider this torment. Only people with a conscience would do so.
jerome says
Justice is overrated , a good woman is dead
gravenimage says
Justice *is* important–but I doubt that will happen here.
And part of justice is acting to make sure things like this will never happen again–also obviously not much happening in France right now.
gregbeetham says
This sort of thing will continue until Islam is banned and all Mosques decommissioned. Practising Islam being made illegal is the only thing that will start to right the ship. Yes there will be disturbances but so what? Those who break the law can be dealt with by what they understand, force.