A French appeals court has ruled that an Algerian nanny convicted of poisoning a Jewish family was not antisemitic.
As previously covered by The Jerusalem Post in December 2025, an Algerian nanny was sentenced to two and a half years’ imprisonment for poisoning a French Jewish family for whom she was working.
The nanny, 42, was watching over three children, who were two, five, and seven years old, in January 2024, when a criminal complaint against the nanny was first filed.
The children’s parents launched the complaint after noticing that a bottle of their grape juice smelled of bleach. The nanny reportedly told police that she “never should have worked for a Jewish woman.”
Nanterre court at the time dismissed the aggravating circumstance of antisemitism on procedural grounds, stating that her comments were made too late after the poisoning and were not recorded in the presence of a lawyer.
The family’s lawyers, Patrick Klugman and Sacha Ghozlan, appealed this.
Central to the appeal was the nanny’s comment that “because they have money and power, I should never have worked for a Jewish woman, she only brought me problems.”
Court of Appeal reconsiders judgment of antisemitism
However, on April 15, the Versailles Court of Appeal reconsidered the December judgment, upholding the nanny’s conviction while again excluding the aggravating circumstance of antisemitism.
The Nanterre criminal court had ruled that the above comment was undeniably antisemitic, but said that they could not be retained as an aggravating factor because they were made outside the presence of the lawyer.
The Versailles Court of Appeal, however, held that such remarks do not constitute antisemitic speech. The family has therefore decided to appeal to the Court of Cassation.
“This decision makes the judicial repression of antisemitism impossible and turns the text of laws, which are supposed to be protective, into mere meaningless scraps of paper. Faced with such a decision, litigants risk losing all forms of trust and protection from the judicial system,” said Klugman and Ghozlan.
The two lawyers called on the Minister of Justice and the National School for the Judiciary to thoroughly review the initial and continuing training of magistrates in the fight against racism and antisemitism.
They also called on the Prosecutor General to file an appeal “in the name of society.”