“I want to know who pierced my mother’s body eleven times”

The trial of the murder of Mireille Knoll opens Tuesday, October 26 before the Assize Court of Paris. This 85-year-old Jewish woman was stabbed and burned in her apartment in the 11th arrondissement on March 23, 2018. In the box, two defendants who blame each other for the murder. The mother of one of them is also on trial, suspected of having cleaned up the potential murder weapon.

On March 23, 2018, Alain Knoll, one of Mireille Knoll’s sons, will, like every day, visit his mother. A few hours later he learns that his body was found charred, larded by 11 stab wounds. Since then, Alain Knoll has been waiting to finally be able to mourn. “I know that I haven’t cried since my mother died and I hope that when the killers are convicted, the emotion will allow me to cry”, he confides on franceinfo. “We try to be serene” corn “to find oneself in front of monsters, it is not easy, adds his brother Daniel Knoll. These people are not part of the community of men. They are monsters, they must be considered as monsters. Can we talk to monsters? I think it’s going to be next to impossible to talk to them. All these people who murder, we can’t talk to them “.

“We hope the truth will come out.”

Alain knoll

to franceinfo

In front of them, in the box, there will be two defendants: Yacine Mihoub, a neighbor who knew Mireille Knoll well and with a very heavy judicial past, and one of his detention friends, Alex Carrimbacus, known for burglaries and psychiatric disorders. Two suspects who reject responsibility for the murder from the start. So Alain Knoll hopes from this trial that he will finally designate a culprit. “I want to know who pierced my mother’s body eleven times, he said. Whoever has thrust the knife into my mother’s body eleven times will have to denounce himself. It really takes hate to do that and that hate, it can only be anti-Semitism “, according to him.

An anti-Semitism retained by justice but here too, the two defendants pass the buck. Me Karim Laouafi defends Alex Carrimbacus. “The anti-Semitic character, today for me, it holds in this file insofar as one found, on the side of Yacine Mihoub, rather objective elements allowing to note a potentially anti-Semitic thought. On the other hand, these elements, they are absolutely not found at Alex Carrimbacus. So if the crime is anti-Semitic, it cannot be Alex Carrimbacus’ crime “, he asserts. Yacine Mihoub he too denies any anti-Semitic intention. He assures that it is his former prison companion who, that day, strangled and stabbed Mireille Knoll, before setting fire to her apartment.