Judge: Muslim's murder of Jew not hate crime

A Muslim man with a history of anti-Semitism allegedly recited verses from the Quran as he beat a Jewish woman and yelled “Allahu Akbar” as he threw her to her death from a third-story window in Paris.

But a French judge ruled Kobili Traore probably was not responsible for his actions because he smoke cannabis before the attack, La Parisien reported.

Traore reportedly shouted “I’ve killed the Shaitan (devil)” after murdering 65-year-old Sarah Halimi in her apartment April 3, 2017.

The judge said in a preliminary ruling Friday that he will decided whether Traore, who has confessed to the crime, will stand trial.

Francis Khalifat, the president of the CRIF umbrella group of French Jewish communities, called the latest ruling “unsurprising but hardly justifiable,” reported the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

CRIF has asserted the omission of hate crimes charges is part a “cover up” by French authorities.

Two years before the murder, Halimi’s daughter said, she was called a “dirty Jewess” by Traore when he passed her in the the apartment building.

Sammy Ghozlan, a former police commissioner and founder of France’s Bureau for Vigilance Against Anti-Semitism, told JTA in May that the handling of the Halimi case has made him “no longer have full confidence that anti-Semitic hate crimes in France are handled properly.”

Israel International News noted the number of anti-Jewish offences reported to police surged 74 percent last year.

In May, a French-Jewish taxi driver said he was mugged and beaten by perpetrators who targeted him because of his Jewish-sounding name.

An 85-year-old Holocaust survivor Mireille Knoll was murdered in March and set on fire in her apartment in Paris. Knoll’s Muslim neighbor, Yacine Mihoub, and an accomplice, confessed to stabbing Knoll to death.

Authorities described the murder as an anti-Semitic hate-crime.

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