The trial of two Frenchmen who hit and killed an Israeli woman while driving an SUV in Tel Aviv in 2011, then fled to France to avoid prosecution, was suspended this week after one of their lawyers was attacked in the court’s bathroom.
Eric Robic, 40, and Claude Khayat, 35, have admitted that they drove into Lee Zeitouni, a 25-year-old physiotherapy student, in central Tel Aviv in September 2011. She was crossing a street in a pedestrian zone.
The two men fled the scene immediately and boarded a flight to France a few hours after hitting Zeitouni.
France would not extradite the two men to face trial in Israel because France does not extradite its nationals, except to European Union member states.
Robic, who had left a nightclub just before the incident, is accused of aggravated involuntary manslaughter, failure to comply with a red light and failure to assist a person in danger, and faces up to 10 years in prison and a €150,000 fine if convicted. He admitted to consuming three drinks of vodka and two drinks of whiskey on the evening of the accident.
Khayat, who has dual French-Israeli citizenship, is charged with failure to assist a person in danger and could face up to five years in prison and a €75,000 fine.
They have acknowledged the facts, but deny going through a red light.
Robic and Khayat, who were arrested in September 2013, after the opening of an investigation, are currently in jail pending a separate French investigation into organized fraud and money-laundering.
Gilles-William Goldnadel, the Zeitouni family’s lawyer, said he was confident about the sentence that the suspects would receive and that the legal case contained enough incriminating evidence against them.
“I think we started this last phase in a spirit of confidence from the French public opinion from the French justice. Serenity is not the right word in relation to this tragedy. But in any case, we have the feeling that the legal file speaks for itself and is also overwhelming,” Goldnadel said.
Supporters of the Zeitouni family brandished posters demanding “Justice for Lee” in front of the Palace of Justice in Paris, where the trial is being held. Lee Zeitouni’s parents, Itzik and Kate, came from Israel and saw the accused for the first time.