A man who threw his 89-year-old Jewish neighbour from the 17th-floor of an apartment block in Lyon has been convicted of murder.
Rachid Kheniche, 55, invited René Hadjadj to his apartment in May 2022 before trying to strangle his victim and throwing him over a balcony of the building where both men resided.
Kheniche, who had published dozens of posts online that repeated antisemitic conspiracy theories, was charged with aggravated murder and had faced life imprisonment, but the Assize Court of Rhône rejected the claim that he was motivated by antisemitism.
Instead, Kheniche, a heroin and cocaine addict who said he was having a paranoid attack on the day of the murder,faced life imprisonment if the aggravating circumstance of antisemitism had been taken into account, but was instead handed a 18-year prison sentence.
Asked why he killed his neighbour, Kheniche said his “illness”, which was diagnosed after the murder, was to blame.
“I don’t know what happened. He was like a father to me.” he told the court.
Kheniche underwent two psychiatric assessments, with one concluding the killer suffered from psychotic paranoia, and the other suggesting he had severe personality disorders.
Prior to the murder Kheniche had posted dozens of times about about people he branded “sayanim” – a term used by conspiracy theorists to denote those they suspect of being Mossad agents.
However, the presiding judge said, this behaviour was not directly connected to the murder itself.
Immediately after pushing Hajaj to his death, the killer took an identification document and a page written in Hebrew that he found in the victim’s coat pocket inside the apartment and cut them up, the judge noted.
The judge said: “Had he thrown away the religious books and other Jewish objects and symbols found in the apartment this might have constituted evidence. But, she said, “that is not what happened.”
Alain Jakubowicz, a lawyer representing a Jewish umbrella group, the Representative Council of French Jewish Institutions, and the International League Against Racism and Antisemitism, both civil parties in the case, told the court that Kheniche was “obsessed with Judaism”.
Addressing one of the psychiatrists, he asked: “If the man standing in front of the killer had not been Jewish, would have the outcome been the same?”
“Probably not. It’s also that element that inflated his delirium,” they responded,
Lawyers for Hadjadj’s family said they felt the prosecution had abandoned them.
The court’s ruling is “an image reflecting our society”, said lawyer Muriel Ouaknine-Melki.
“It’s the image of the way France is dealing with the plague of antisemitism.”
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