Man Jailed In Ireland For Threatening To Behead Jews
(JTA) — A Dutch man living in Ireland was sentenced to five years in jail after threatening his two French housemates, praising the Islamic State and saying he would behead Jews.
Shmael Heirouche, 40, was sentenced Wednesday in Cork Circuit Criminal Court after pleading guilty to a charge of threatening to kill or cause serious harm, the Irish Independent reported.
Heirouche, who is of Moroccan ancestry, was diagnosed as schizophrenic in Holland. However, Judge Sean O’Donnabhain called his threats a serious matter and noted that society had a right to be protected. Heirouche has refused to accept psychiatric support services, according to the report.
Heirouche praised Islamic State terror attacks in France to his French housemates saying that they gave him “great joy,” and said that those who carried out the attacks would “get a first class ticket” to paradise, according to the report. At the time of his arrest he told officers that of he had a sword he would cut off the heads of Jews.
The housemates also told the court that Heirouche described them as Zionists and said that all Zionists should “have their throats cut.”
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
