The Jewish community and others in France were appalled by
the kidnapping and murder of Ilan Halimi, a 23-year-old
Jewish sales assistant who was abducted by a gang of Moslem
Africans and Arabs from the Arab neighborhood of Bagneux in
the suburbs south of Paris. Up until Monday, the press and
police referred to the group as the "gang of barbarians"
implying that they are violent without prejudice, but the
Jewish community says that it is an antisemitic gang that
imitates Iraqi-style Islamic terrorism.
On Sunday, hundreds of Jews marched in grief and fear from
the Place de la Republique to the 11th Arrondissement where
Halimi was kidnapped. During the demonstration they protested
French authorities' handling of antisemitic crime. Once again
the authorities tried to cover up the antisemitic nature of
the shocking incident. However on Monday the investigating
magistrate placed seven suspects under formal investigation
for kidnapping, illegal imprisonment, criminal association
and "murder linked to the victim's religion."
"Every time Jews are harmed or a beis knesses is
burned down they announce they found no antisemitic motive
and call on the Jewish community to keep the peace — as
if the Jews were attacking Arabs," said one demonstrator on
Sunday, when the authorities were still calling it nonracial
barbarism.
A non-Jewish woman said she was taking part in the march
because "it was intolerable in France for a young man,
whether Jewish or French, to be tortured for three weeks."
The incident marked the first time that a group of Arabs and
Africans, all Moslem, kidnapped, tortured and killed a Jew in
France.
The public prosecutor said that the abductors tortured their
victim with barbaric cruelty beyond description. The family
members say the kidnappers did not appear interested in
ransom money. Jews have lost faith in French authorities
after numerous efforts to whitewash arson attacks on botei
knesses and assaults against Jews in Arab neighborhoods.
Every announcement is now considered suspect.
Early Friday morning police arrested 13 Arabs and North
Africans ranging in age from 17 to 32 who were involved in
the kidnapping, and also located the apartment where Halimi
had been held. At 4:00 am 200 policemen from a special unit
raided a cluster of apartments, removing the suspects one
after the next. Three have been charged with kidnapping and
as accomplices to murder while 10 are still under
investigation.
The gang leader, an African named Youssef Fofana, managed to
escape and disappear. The concierge allowed the gang to use
the apartment where Halimi was held. An Arab woman who was
used to lure the victim, led police to the apartment.
Sammy Ghozlan, who serves as liaison between the police and
the Jewish community, found it hard to understand how nobody
in the apartment building heard or saw anything. According to
a report in Liberation, residents claim they knew
nothing.
"It couldn't have been in this building," one said. "The
basements and empty apartments were barricaded with
cement."
Others say they knew Fofana as a half-Arab, half-African
involved in thefts. In these neighborhoods delinquents easily
go from petty theft to antisemitic attacks. Neighborhood
residents said it was not an organized gang but a band of
Arabs and north Africans that formed around the kidnapping,
including a college student wanted by police.
As of Sunday, the police were still claiming that the crime
was not antisemitic in nature. However by Tuesday morning
they began to acknowledge that it was specifically directed
against a Jew.
At first the press referred to the kidnapping victim only by
his first name, intentionally omitting his last name which is
recognizably Jewish. Halimi's family and the rest of the
Jewish community never accepted the police claim. In phone
calls to the family the kidnappers recited excerpts from the
Koran and antisemitic slurs. They also sent an email
message with a picture of Halimi blindfolded with a pistol
pointed at his head, mimicking kidnappers in Iraq.
According to Le Monde the police wasted valuable time
on suspicions that the kidnapping was staged to extort money
from the Jewish community. At one point they did not even
believe Halimi had been kidnapped.
Police claim that the gang tried to kidnap Jews on six
previous occasions, using the same method. One near-victim
was saved at the last moment when the would-be kidnappers
heard a car approaching and fled.
The phone calls to Halimi's family indicate the gang was very
familiar with the Jewish community and apparently had been
conducting surveillance of Jewish businesses and botei
knesses. Investigators told Le Monde that one of
the suspects admitted they had searched for and marked Jews
for assassination and kidnapping.
"The antisemitic motive appears unlikely," said Public
Prosecutor Jean-Claude Marin. CRIF, an umbrella organization
for Jewish groups in France, accepted the police's claim and
asked the Jewish community to remain calm until findings are
released. But according to suspicions the gang planned to
kidnap and kill Jews and the ransom demand was a peripheral
motive. Although the family offered to deliver ransom money
they repeatedly cancelled arranged meetings. Several of the
kidnappers were arrested in Belgium, raising suspicions of
links to an international Islamic terrorist group. In a
photograph, the gang leader wears a Moslem-style beard. The
gang had electronic equipment to prevent the police from
tracing or tapping their calls.
Late last week Halimi was found near death alongside the
train tracks, bound and blindfolded with stab wounds
throughout his body. He died soon thereafter.
The ransom demands appear to have been designed to veil
intentions to torture Jews. Halimi was from a poor family and
an unlikely target for a ransom kidnapping. Members of the
Jewish community believe that it is pretty clear that he was
abducted because he was Jewish. In one of the calls to the
family the kidnappers demanded they raise 450,000 euros from
the Jewish community, later lowering their demand to 5,000
euros. They even called a rov and demanded he collect money
in botei knesses.
One thousand stunned members of the Jewish community attended
the levaya on Friday. The family could not afford to
pay the burial expenses, which were covered by Jewish
donors.
The public prosecutor disseminated pictures of Fofana, dubbed
in the press as "the brains of the barbarians," making him
the most wanted person in France. Before the funeral he
called Halimi's father to demand the ransom money. The public
prosecutor maintains the motive was extortion and not
antisemitism. But he himself said he cannot explain why they
made minimal attempts to obtain the ransom money they asked
for and then tortured Halimi to death and previously tried to
kidnap only Jews. He speculated that the killers were
influenced by television and Internet images and perpetrated
the acts of torture as violence for its own sake.
The police held a press conference, giving wide publicity to
the abominable crime. Liberation criticized the
publicity, saying it was excessive for a local crime by a
neighborhood gang and was because the suspects hail from an
Arab suburb. Arab sociologist Marwan Mohammed, an expert on
suburban gangs, even posited that Halimi's killers used
cruelty just to strengthen their power over the gang.
Early this week, just days after the funeral, CRIF held a
festive banquet for Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin.
Organization Chairman Roger Cukierman promised that the Jews
would remain calm. Other Jewish organizations criticized
CRIF's conduct, saying it does not represent the average Jew
but only a handful of prominent personages who just seek
honor. Serge Heidenberg, head of the opposition in CRIF, said
the wealthy are detached from the Jews and their problems,
preferring to hold lavish affairs rather than act to preserve
their safety. No CRIF leaders joined the 3,000 protesters at
the march against government inaction.
