Association CHAR

Ailin Vilches Arguello, The Algemeiner A French court has sentenced an Irishman who threatened to shoot a Jewish couple to six months of suspended prison time, prompting outrage from Jewish leaders and political figures in what appears to be yet another instance of excessive leniency toward antisemitism in France’s legal system. The Correctional Tribunal of Avignon, a city in southeastern France, handed 60-year-old Patrick O’Brien a six-month suspended sentence on Friday after convicting him of “attempting to justify crimes against humanity” and “making death threats aggravated by their antisemitic nature” for threatening Australian Jewish tourists earlier this year. O’Brien’s suspended sentence means he will not go to prison unless he violates the conditions imposed by the court during the suspension period. The Avignon court rejected prosecutors’ request to bar O’Brien from entering France for three years, further intensifying criticism of the leniency shown in his sentencing. As part of the ruling, O’Brien was ordered to pay approximately $580 in compensation to each victim and $350 each to the Jewish organizations Campaign Against Hate, Antisemitism, and Racism (CHAR) and B’nai B’rith. Even though CHAR welcomed the conviction, the organization condemned the sentence as too lenient, warning that the punishment failed to reflect the seriousness of O’Brien’s antisemitic threats. “To publicly wish for the completion of the Holocaust, then threaten a woman with death because she is Jewish, and walk away with a suspended sentence and a fine of just a few hundred euros – this sends a message that trivializes such acts, and it is something we cannot accept,” the statement read. “The victim’s father survived the Holocaust – her family was murdered at Auschwitz. What was expressed in front of the victim was, in effect, a regret that her family had not been entirely wiped out,” it continued. Although Sharon Kuperholz and her husband welcomed the verdict as a sign that O’Brien could not escape accountability, they also argued that France’s justice system continued to impose far too lenient penalties on offenders.