France – Man Who Assaulted Three Jews With Knife In Marseille Sentenced To 4 Years In Prison By French Court

France – A 32 year-old man who assaulted three Jewish worshippers with a knife near a Marseille synagogue last year was sentenced to 4 years in prison on Wednesday by a French criminal court.

FRANCETVINFO.fr (http://bit.ly/1NOcnEK) reports that Farid Haddouche was also given an 18-month suspended sentence and ordered to compensate his victims after being found guilty of aggravated assault in the incident which occurred on October 24, 2014.

Haddouche was initially deemed mentally unfit to stand trial due to mental illness following a psychiatric evaluation, but the diagnosis was reversed after several organizations belonging to the Council of French Jewish Institutions petitioned the court to review Haddouche’s status based on testimony from his victims that he deliberately targeted his victims based on their religious beliefs.

According to police, Haddouche, who was extremely intoxicated at the time, initially attacked a municipal employee with a canister of tear gas around 7:30 p.m.

Haddouche then set his sights on a rabbi, his son, and a third member of the Jewish community—a woman in her 50’s—as they were leaving synagogue for home.

Shouting anti-Semitic slogans repeatedly, Haddouche then produced a kitchen knife and stabbed the woman twice in the stomach as she tried to defend the trio.

The woman’s wounds were not life-threatening, but she did miss three months of work recovering from her injuries.

Reps for the National Bureau for Vigilance against anti-Semitism, lauded the sentence by the court, saying that they “hope the judgement will act as a deterrent” to others contemplating harming Jews.