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Ritual Murder Accusation in Algiers: Jew Kept in Prison in Oran and Maltreated on Charge of Killing

February 27, 1931
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The Jewish population of Oran, in Algiers, (a notorious seat of antisemitism, where serious anti-Jewish disturbances have several times occurred, the movement being led by the Mayor of Oran, Deputy Molle, who died a few weeks ago, his campaign being continued by his paper “Le Petit Oranais”) is excited over the arrest of a local Jew named Teboul on a charge of ritual murder.

Teboul was arrested together with his wife and his mother-in-law, following the death of his wife’s sister, a girl named Juliette Torjmen. The girl’s mother and sister were soon after released, but Teboul is being kept in prison while the authorities are pursuing their enquiries, admittedly to obtain evidence in support of the ritual murder accusation brought up against him, backed by the fact of the approaching Passover festival, for which, it is being claimed, Jews require human blood.

Teboul is being brutally treated in prison, a number of the local papers complain. He is being beaten senseless, and recently when he complained after such a beating that he was ill, he was taken to hospital, where the doctor refused to admit him, saying that there was nothing the matter with him. The authorities are being carried away by medieval prejudice, they say, and are forgetting everything about the principle of humans ‘treatment of prisoners, especially since nothing at all has been proved against Teboul.

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