himon Samuels, Director of international relations at the Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC) in Paris, has called on France's Justice Minister to treat the murder of Sarah Halimi as an anti-Semitic crime.

Samuels wrote a letter to the minister, Nicole Belloubet, who was appointed by President Emmanuel Macron on June 28.’’ Madam Minister, does it take not even the murder of a Jew qua Jew – as in the case of Dr. Sarah Halimi – to be recognized as an act of antisemitism?,’’ he asked.

“Further procrastination in addressing the murder of Jews as if they were simply targets of the insane or the greedy will register as indifference to their fate,” Samuels said. “The perpetrator of Halimi’s murder must be arraigned, charged and a date set for his trial without further delay,” he added.

66-year-old Sarah Halimi, a former kindergarten teacher, was killed by a 27 year-old Muslim immigrant Kobili Traore, from Mali, who broke into her apartment on April 7. As he subjected the woman to a savage beating, neighbors alerted police after hearing her screams. Officers who arrived at the scene just heard Traore shouting “Allahu Akhbar!” and “I have killed Shaitan!” (Arabic for ‘Satan’). Fearing a terrorist attack was being planned, the officers called for backup. But by the time anti-terror units arrived, Traore had thrown Halimi’s fractured and bruised body out of the window of her third-floor apartment.

Traore, is currently in hospital awaiting a psychiatric evaluation. Despite reportedly having no known history of mental instability, if Traore is deemed mentally unfit, he is likely to escape criminal responsibility for Halimi’s torture and murder.

Samuels called for an end “to the culture of apology that treats French Islamist perpetrators as psychiatric cases rather than hate crime terrorists.”

In his letter to the minister, Samuels recalled previous brutal anti-Semitic murders in France, including the kidnapping and murder of Ilan Halimi in January 2006, by a gang who had set out to hold a “wealthy Jew” for ransom, and the dismissal of the charge of anti-Semitism in the 2014 case of a young Jewish couple taken prisoner in their own home, beaten and – in the case of the wife – raped.

“Media silence, the lack of an indictment and the very thought of dismissal by the investigating magistrate, is an abuse of the human rights of Jewish victims of anti-Semitism and an encouragement to further Jihadist terrorism,” he wrote.

The Jewish community has criticized the indifference of the media. This silence and indifference, which were also condemned by several leading intellectuals denouncing the broader challenge of anti-Semitism among French Muslims, have been interpreted as a desire of top journalists and editors to ignore the case so as not to boost the electoral chances of extreme-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen in the May election.

It’s only last week that French television channel TF1 aired a report on the murder.

Attorneys for Sarah Halimi’s relatives have lodged a formal complaint with the Paris Public Prosecutor’s office over the manner in which local authorities in the French capital have treated her case.