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Thugs stab an 85 year old woman to death, set her ablaze

Published

7 years ago

March 26, 2018

Two thugs have been arrested on Monday over the killing of an 85-year-old Jewish woman whose body was found after a fire broke out in her Paris apartment.
An autopsy conducted on the woman, who lived alone, showed she had been stabbed several times before Friday’s blaze, Police source says.

A Paris lawmaker who spoke with one of the woman’s sons said she had managed to evade as a child the notorious 1942 roundup of over 13,000 Jews in Paris during World War II.

Fewer than 100 of those who were were detained at the so-called Vel d’Hiv cycling track and then sent to the Nazi death camps survived. It is so painful she eventually lost her life to a similar attack decades later, the sons says.

She was identified only as “Mireille K.” by the Jewish Community Protection Service, which works closely with the French police.

The Paris prosector’s office said Sunday that it had not yet determined a motive, but “is not excluding any hypothesis.”

“The investigation has uncovered elements suggesting there was not an anti-Semitic motive, but this possibility has not yet been excluded,” the SPCJ said in a statement late Sunday.

The CRIF umbrella grouping of French Jewish organisations urged “the fullest transparency” by the authorities investigating the killing, “so that the motive of this barbarous crime is known as quickly as possible.”

France’s half-a-million-plus Jewish community has voiced increasing concern over a rise in violent anti-Semitic acts. There have been a recent pressure on the new french government to clamp down on attacks on the Jewish community

Last month, a judge confirmed that the April 2017 murder of Sarah Halimi, a 65-year-old orthodox Jewish woman who was beaten and thrown out of her window was indeed motivated by anti-Semitism. This confirmation came by after months of intense legal battle.

(AFP)