A court in Paris this evening (Wednesday) sentenced Yasin Meyhoub, who stabbed 85-year-old Holocaust survivor Mirai Knoll to death in March 2018, in an antisemitic attack he carried out with another accomplice.
Mahob was convicted of murdering Knoll, who was stabbed 11 times and her body partially burned after her apartment in Paris was set on fire.
His partner, Alex Karimbakos, was acquitted of the murder by the court but was found guilty of theft.
The two, who met in jail and have convictions for theft and violence, deny killing the fragile and immobile grandmother.
Prosecutors referred to the murder as an antisemitic hate crime because one of the convicts said he heard the other talking about "the money of the Jews and their wealth" and that he shouted "Allah Akbar" while stabbing.
The investigation also showed that Mahib had an "ambivalent" attitude toward Islamic extremism.
Knoll's son, Daniel, told reporters last Tuesday: "" They are monsters.
We are expecting a very serious verdict. "
Flowers outside Miriam Knoll's apartment after the 2018 murder, Photo: AP
"Murdered because of her Judaism"
The assassination was the latest in a series of assaults that terrified the 500,000-strong Jewish community in France, exacerbating concerns about how rising Islamic extremism is fueling anti-Semitism in the country.
An estimated 30,000 people took part in a silent march in memory of Knoll held in March 2018, which was attended by government ministers and heads of political parties in France.
One of the organizers, Sabrina Moises, said at the time: "Although I love France, I feel that it is no longer safe for Jews because of the rising anti-Semitism in it."
In 2012, Islamist militant Muhammad Marah shot dead three children and a teacher at a Jewish school in the southwestern city of Toulouse.
Three years later, an armed man killed four people after taking hostages at a Jewish supermarket in the French capital.
The late Mirai Knoll, Photo: EPI
In 2017, an Orthodox Jewish woman in her sixties, Sarah Halimi, was thrown out of the window of her apartment in Paris by a neighbor who shouted "Allah Akbar."
The French Supreme Court ruled last April that the killer, Cubili Trauma, was not responsible for the crime, after succumbing to a "hallucination attack" under the influence of drugs and therefore could not stand trial.
This ruling angered the victim's family as well as Jewish groups in the country and prompted Macron to push for a change in French law to ensure people would be held accountable for violent crimes even when under the influence of drugs.
The court's decision provoked demonstrations in France and Israel.
Speaking of Knoll, Macron said her killer "murdered an innocent and vulnerable woman just because she was Jewish and thus violated our most sacred values."
President Macron attended the funeral of a Holocaust survivor who escaped from a notorious event in which more than 13,000 Jews gathered in Paris in 1942 when she fled with her mother to Portugal at the age of nine.
