Word: french
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...first time since the Shoah - since Nazi occupation, [French] collaboration, and deportations - that a Jew was murdered in France purely because he was Jewish," Sammy Ghozlan, president of the National Office of Vigilance Against Anti-Semitism, told reporters outside the Justice Ministry following the decision to hold a retrial. (See pictures of the rise of Adolf Hitler...
...plot to kidnap Halimi was predicated on the gang's belief that all Jews are rich. The group had tried to abduct two other Jewish men before ensnaring Halimi - a focus that, along with Fofana's outrageous baiting of Halimi's family during the trial - led French public opinion to belatedly agree with Jewish groups that the crime had been anti-Semitic in nature...
...trial and sentences to both punish the brutality of the murder and serve as a warning that anti-Semitism will not be tolerated in France. They also want the new trial to be held in public and not behind closed doors as the first one was. Under French law, when someone accused of committing a crime as a minor - as was the case with one member of the "Gang of Barbarians" - the hearings are closed to the press and public to protect the defendant's identity. Officials have yet to say whether they'll move for the new trial...
...members of the legal community have voiced concerns about the political intervention in France's independent justice system. That action provokes even more alarm given French President Nicolas Sarkozy's planned reforms to shift investigative control of criminal cases to state prosecutors - who, as political appointees, critics accuse, are more attentive to the interests of their governmental mentors than...
...despite the unspeakable brutality and hatred in Halimi's murder that has unleashed wide condemnation of anti-Semitism in France, some officials are worried that the retrial will set a bad precedent. "Justice isn't the same thing as vengeance," warned Emmanuelle Perreux, president of one of the French legal profession's main labor unions, on radio station RTL. "Giving in to pressure from any [civil party] that believes, and will always believe, that punishment isn't severe enough strikes me as troubling." Perhaps, but as those pushing for a new trial note, adding a few years to prison sentences...