French teen who attacked Jewish teacher with machete gets 7 years in jail
Benjamin Amsellem says attack traumatized him and he now hides his kippa; his attorneys say he is pleased with verdict
A French high school student of Kurdish descent who tried to murder a Jewish teacher in Marseille was convicted and sentenced to seven years in prison, Israel Radio reported Friday.
The prosecution initially sought a punishment of 10 years against the perpetrator, who was still a minor at the time of the attack last year.
An attorney representing the victim, Benjamin Amsellem, said that he was pleased with the verdict.
At the time, the teen said he was acting in the name of Allah and that he was affiliated with the Islamic State terror organization.
On Tuesday, Amsellem told the news website 20 Minutes about how his life was turned upside down following last year’s incident in Marseille.
Having moved to the Paris region as part of his therapy, Amsellem said he now prefers “to wear a hat instead of the kippah in places where I don’t feel safe.” He said he never feared wearing a kippah in Marseille.
The interview was published one day before the opening the trial in a Paris juvenile court. Amsellem was wearing his kippah when he attended the start of the trial.
According to the AFP news agency, which defined the trial as “a sad precedent,” this is the first time that a minor under the age of 18 was tried in France for a jihadist attack. The youth, whose name was not published in the media, was still 15 when he attacked Amsellem and fled the scene after the victim fought him off using a Bible to shield his body from the knife.
The attack, in January 2016, was particularly shocking to the Jewish community in Marseille, France’s second largest city with a population of 852,000, because it had seen proportionately fewer anti-Semitic attacks than in Paris, where hundreds are recorded annually. The city has a Jewish population of 80,000.
Amsellem is still undergoing therapy to deal with the psychological effects of the attack. While the trial has brought back “something I try not to think of,” he decided to talk to the media to say that “it exists, it can happen and one needs to be careful, one needs to take precautions to save one’s life.”
According to the defendant’s lawyer, Merabi Murgulia, the defendant has confessed to committing the actions for which he is standing trial and regrets them profoundly.
Following the attack a source close to the investigation told local media the boy had said he was “ashamed” that he did not manage to kill Amsellem.
The teenager, an ethnic Kurd from Turkey, told police he did not regret the assault, and that he was inspired by the Islamic State terror group.
In the wake of the attack a debate began in France’s Jewish community over whether men and boys should stop wearing the skullcap identifying their religion.
Zvi Ammar, the leader of Marseille’s Jewish community, urged male Jews to stop wearing the kippah “until better days,” because of fears for their safety.
At the time French President Francois Hollande rejected as “intolerable” the idea that fear of attack would prompt French Jews to “hide.”
“It is intolerable that in our country citizens should feel so upset and under assault because of their religious choice that they would conclude that they have to hide,” Hollande said.
The local representative of France’s CRIF umbrella Jewish group said that to take off skullcaps would be akin “to stopping being Jewish” and noted that “Jews have been in France for generations before Muslims.”
The Chief Rabbi of France, Haim Korsia, also opposed the idea, tweeting that “we must not cede to emotion.”
Roger Cukierman, the head of CRIF, agreed, saying the call reflected “a defeatist attitude”.
The attack led several ministers and other politicians to speak out on the issue of shunning kippahs, with Education Minister Najat Vallaud-Belkacem saying, “It’s certainly not the advice I would give, personally.”
Joel Mergui, president of France’s Israelite Central Consistory, said: “If we have to give up wearing any distinctive sign of our identity, it clearly would raise the question of our future in France.”
Brice Hortefeux of the opposition, center-right Republicans party agreed with the chief rabbi that “giving up (the kippah) is giving in”. But he said it was impossible “not to modify your behaviour in the face of these unspeakable acts.”
