French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said that those responsible for the death of Lee Zeitouni, the 25-yzar-old Israeli woman hit and killed by the car of two Frenchman in Tel Aviv in September, "must be tried.".
But he said French law does not allow the two men to be extradited to Israel.
Juppe called on Israel and the family of Lee Zeitouni to complete the legal procedures necessary to try the two men implicated in the accident.
The minister said France's legal system would act with determination to bring the two men to justice. "The French police and the courts have actively cooperated with the Israeli authorities to advance the investigation," he said Thursday in an address to members of the France-Israel Foundation whom he received at the foreign ministry.
"Our law does not allow us to extradite the suspects because of their French nationality, or to engage our own legal proceedings against them in France," Juppe said.
"We expect an appeal from Israel to the Israeli authorities or the filing of a complaint by the family in France to start this procedure.”
The two Frenchmen, Claude Khayat and Eric Robic, were on board of a BMW SUV vehicle that hit and killed Lee Zeitouni on her way to her work in Tel Aviv.
Immediately after the accident, the two men hastily left Israel and flew to France to escape Israeli justice.
One of the two, Claude Khayat, acknowledged that he drived the car at the time of the accident, in a film broadcast by the second tv channel in Israel.
The man was filmed without his knowledge by a hidden camera and said: "I was the driver. It pains me but I did not mean to." He pleaded to be tried in France.
He also said they would be ready to meet Lee’s fiance, Roi Peled.
But Peled said he was "pleased that new details were revealed so that the public will better understand who are the people who killed Lee. It is scandalous that France continues to provide shelter to these criminals."
70 members of the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, have called on French President Nicolas Sarkozy to intervene so that the two suspects be extradited to Israel.
France's Chief Rabbi of France, Gilles Bernheim, wrote a letter to all rabbis of France in which he asked not to give the two men any religious honor in all the communities.
"In order to escape justice, these two suspects immediately took the first flight to their home country, France," wrote Gilles Bernheim. "Such a behavior doesn’t represent the values ​​of judaism and is certainly not a credit for our community."

by: Joseph Byron