by Jean-David Benichou, President, ElNet France (Translated from original French)
The decision of the Court of Cassation sinks the foundations of the French Republic.
The decision that concludes that the murderer of Sarah Halimi, a mother of 3 children, an exemplary citizen, in her sixties, murdered in the greatest violence, because she was Jewish, by a black Muslim, thirty years old, a multi-recidivist, idle, inveterate consumer of cannabis since the age of 16, on the grounds of an acute delirious crisis, alters the founding principles of our country , starting with the principle of equality.
Equality?
This promise that ornate the pediment of our institutions, it is that of the equality of all the citizens in face of the law. Why is this first principle threatened in its foundation? Well, because it is enough to consider a reverse scenario. A black mother, Muslim, exemplary, savagely murdered by a white Catholic in his thirties, often condemned, unemployed, drug addicted since his adolescence and who kills with the cry of "Jesus is our savior, I killed the Evil One". This horrible crime, which would have made millions of French people take to the streets in revolt against racial violence, committed in the name of a perverted faith, a crime with an odious colonial flavor, of a blond man on a brunette, of a Catholic on a Muslim woman, this crime, would it have left the choice to the supreme magistrates , to say that in law, well no, this murderer is not criminally responsible because he was a victim of an acute delirious state at the time of committing the act?
Sarah Halimi and alleged murderer, Kobili Traore |
Everyone will make their own opinion, but it is plausible to believe that in such a case, facing the risk of the nation's conflagration, the judges would not have taken the decision to analyze the law restrictively. They would have, rightly, interpreted the law to make it conform to its essential objective of maintaining peace and civil order and would have said, logically, that the deliberate use of drugs cannot be a mitigating circumstance because it deliberately causes an alteration of the discernment, and that of course, this man must be judged for his crime and condemned by a popular jury.
Freedom?
There is only public freedom because there is an implacable justice that is imposed on all.
The right to life is inseparable from the condemnation of homicide. This was not the case for a long time when the law of the strongest prevailed and the weakest were exterminated.
Murder is even the only reason why the law has long given justice the right to condemn to the death penalty. Its abolition has been replaced by a very long period of deprivation of liberty, sometimes until the death of the condemned.
But when the perpetrator of an established anti-Semitic crime escapes judgment for a reason whose basis is hidden in the meanders of the law's unspoken words, when high magistrates lose themselves in the exegesis of the Letter to the detriment of the Spirit, then we witness the collapse of that other republican looter who bears the name of Freedom.
For how can we prohibit when we no longer sanction? How can we guarantee public liberties if we absolve the most despicable criminals of their responsibility? And above all, if drug use is now a mitigating circumstance, how many retrials can we expect?
Is that Fraternity?
Our country is going through its most serious identity crisis. The 55,000 cathedrals, churches and priorities of France are emptying, while the 3000 mosques are overflowing and the 300 synagogues are depopulating.
Instead, we carry in our hands digital temples that level the culture with stories, destroy the critical spirit, abolish the nuance and atrophy the curiosity. When science becomes a conspiracy and a conspiracy a revealed truth, when belief prevails over knowledge, is it any wonder that this Brotherhood explodes, that a man kills his neighbor because he sees at his place symbols contrary to his own faith, that a hysterical man beheads a professor and that a murderer is declared irresponsible because he was stoned during his crime?
What a tragedy to see the resurgence of obscurantism in the land of enlightenment.
President Emmanuel Macron reacted with celerity. Taking note of the judgment and its unbearable consequences, he asked the Minister of Justice to undertake without delaying a text to reform the legal status of criminal irresponsibility. It should be recalled in this look that on January 8, 2020, Senator Nathalie Goulet had already filed a bill in this sense ...
In the absence of bringing the family of the deceased a reparative trial, may this legislative change bear the name of Sarah Halimi so that we never forget that the ultimate objective of the law is to protect the weak and the minorities by depriving the strong and the majorities of any impunity.
For it is the determining condition for society to live in freedom, equality and fraternity and for the foundation of the Republic to remain solid."
- Jean-David Benichou, President Elnet France. www.elnetwork.eu
(courtesy of Larry Hochberg)