According to the French Attorney General, Ilan Halimi was selected as a prey by the "multiethnic" gang " because he was Jewish".Antisemitism may have played a role in the gruesome abduction and killing of Ilan Halimi, a young Parisian Jew. Both Corinne Goetzmann, the judge in charge of the investigation, and Pascal Clement, the French Attorney General, agreed on that last Monday. Under French law, racial or religious prejudice or hatred is an aggravating circumstance in a trial for murder.
Ilan Halimi, a 23 years old telephone salesman, was apparently lured in a date with an attractive " Maghrebine looking " female customer on January 20. The encounter was supposed to take place late by night at Bagneux, in the Southern suburbs of Paris. The day after, the parents were told by e-mail that their son had been abducted and were requested to pay a 450 000 euros ransom. In order to validate their claim, the abductors sent by e-mail a picture reminiscent of the Islamist hijacking of Westerners in Iraq : Halimi was staged as holding a newspaper (as an evidence of the day and hour) under the threat of a gun.
More e-mails and pictures were to be sent on the following days. The family reported to the police who advised to engage into a protracted bargaining about the ransom. Strangely enough, the abductors agreed to lower their claims to 100 000 euros. There was even talk, at some point, of the comparatively insignificant sum of 5000 euros. According to a police source, " this behavior was very different from what is usually expected from abductors motivated by greed ".
Finally, the abductors stopped communicating with the family. Four days later, on February 11, Ilan Halimi was found at Sainte-Genevieve-des-Bois, some fifteen kilometers south of Bagneux, not far from a railway. He was naked, handscuffed and bleeding. His entire body – or " 80 % of it ", as the police dryly reported – had been butchered . He couldn’t talk. He was to die just a few minutes later, on his way to the hospital. More than one thousand people attended his funeral at the Jewish cemetery at Pantin, in the Eastern suburbs of Paris.
The police released only then the photofit picture of a young woman that had acted as a bait in seducing cases much similar to Halimi’s. Quite surprisingly, the woman, a certain Audrey L., turned over herself to the police on February 17. She had been recognized by close friends and pressured by them to surrender.
She disclosed that Halimi’s abduction – in which she claimed not having had a part – had been masterminded and perpetrated by " the Barbarians ", a gang led by Youssouf Fofana, a 26 years old immigrant from Africa. The Barbarians had been involved in similar cases in the past. In a matter of a few hours, some fifteen members of the gang were under arrest. Fofana and the Maghrebine girl who may have lured Halimi fled to the Ivory Coast.
More details emerged after the arrests. Ilan Halimi had been held in several different places in densely populated Bagneux neighborhoods. The residents, most of them immigrants, did not pay attention. By and large, these areas are seen as " no law enclaves " (" zones de non droit ") where the police cannot properly operate.
The Barbarians were not a homogeneous gang. Some members, like Fofana, were die hard criminals with records in armed robbery. Others were just used for menial tasks. According to her lawyer, Audrey L., a nurse in a senior citizens home, had been involved in several seducing operations but had not quite realized what it was about. However, others baits may have known better and be more active accomplices. All in all, seven members (six men and one woman) have been charged for criminal offenses.
In ethnic and socioeconomic terms too, the gang was variegated. The criminal core comprised of Muslim Africans. The lesser partners were Muslim Maghrebines or Christian Whites. Many members were undereducated and unemployed. Others were attending highschool and even college.
According to the French Attorney General, Ilan Halimi was selected as a prey " because he was Jewish and thus, as a Jew, presumed to be rich ". One teen-age member of the gang admitted having crushed a cigarette on Halimi’s face " because he didn’t like Jews ". It seems however that the Barbarians antisemitic motivations went much further.
Fofana and other core members of the gang may have been close to a local mosque. According to one testimony, Kuranic verses were said while Halimi was subjected to torture. There are precedents of Islamist terrorists luring young non-Muslims into the prospect of sex or romance, usually by Internet, in order to abduct them, torture them and kill them. One Israeli teenager was murdered in this way near Ramallah a few years ago.
Last Monday, the Halimi murder was the top issue at the yearly dinner of the Representative Council of the Jewish Organizations of France (CRIF). Rogier Cukierman, the Council’s chairman, entreated prime minister Dominique de Villepin, the dinner’s guest speaker, to help bringing out the truth about the young man’s assassination : " Did Ilan die because he was Jewish ? I ask solemnly for the plain truth and truth only ". Villepin promised to cooperate : " We owe you the truth. Indeed we owe it to the entire French nation ".