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| Europe | |||
| France arrests gang in torture death of Parisian Jew | |||
| 2006-02-20 | |||
| The French police arrested late Thursday night most of the members of the gang that abducted, tortured and murdered Ilan Halimi, a 23-year-old Jew from Paris. Hundreds of SWAT officers raided apartments in Bagneux and arrested 12 people. Another suspect was arrested in Belgium. "They acted with indescribable cruelty," the judiciary police chief leading the investigation said. "They kept him naked and tied up for weeks. They cut him and in the end poured flammable liquid on him and set him alight." While the citizens of France were shocked by the unbridled violence of the gang, Halimi's family claims that the murder was motivated by anti-Semitism. "We think there is anti-Semitism in this affair," Rafi Halimi, Ilan's uncle, told the press. "First, because the killers tried to kidnap at least two other Jews, and second, because of what they said on the phone," Rafi Halimi added. "When we said we didn't have 500,000 euros to give them they told us to go to the synagogue and get it," Rafi said. "They also recited verses from the Koran." But the Paris public prosecutor, Jean-Claude Marin, told Parisian Jewish radio on Thursday that "no element of the current investigation could link this murder to an anti-Semitic declaration or action."
Ilan Halimi's family points to the behavior of the kidnappers in their ransom negotiations, which began a few days after Ilan disappeared. Halimi was abducted on January 21 after a woman came into the mobile phone store where he worked and charmed him into a dinner date. The woman had been sent by the gang, which calls itself "The Barbarians." A police source said the gang is a group of childhood friends who grew up in Bagneux, a suburb south of Paris. The gang includes Muslims of North African descent and is headed by Youssef Fofana, who has escaped police capture so far. According to Marin, the gang had made six similar abduction attempts in the past. After overpowering Halimi, the gang brought him to an apartment in a high-rise in Bagneux. They contacted Halimi's family and over the next three weeks demanded ransoms ranging from 300,000 to 500,000 euros. According to reports, at one point they agreed upon a deal and set a meeting place but the kidnappers backed out and eventually ended contact. A source in the Jewish community said the gang's behavior suggested that the motive behind the kidnapping was violence for its own sake, particularly against Jews. "Why didn't they release him when the realized the family couldn't pay ransom?" asked Sami Gazlan, who is responsible for security in the Jewish community. Last Monday, a few days after the kidnappers ended contact with the family, Ilan was found near a suburban train station south of Paris, naked, handcuffed and gagged, with burns covering 80 percent of his body. He died on the way to the hospital. The first break in the case came on Thursday after the police released an Identikit image of the woman suspected of "baiting" Halimi. The woman turned herself in out of fears that neighbors would identify her, and identified the apartment where Halimi had been kept. The store where Halimi had worked was closed Saturday. Several shops in the area, the 11th arondissement, were closed on Friday, with signs explaining that it was a gesture of sympathy for Halimi's family.
Dozens of family members returned home, in the 12th arondissement, to begin sitting shiva after the funeral. Walking back, accompanied by police officers, relatives expressed their shock at the murder. "We are in total shock," a close friend of Ilan's said Saturday. "All of us, Ilan's mother especially, have not yet begun to comprehend what happened."
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| Posted by:lotp |
| #9 Per Trailing Wife: "I'm very happy to see the Jews of France aren't as head-in-the-sand as we'd feared." Reminds me of an old joke.. A preacher made his way one Sunday to dinner as a guest of an old farmer who didn’t get out to church much anymore. The farmer and his brood welcomed the preacher and he took his seat next to the farmer at the table. The family’s old hound, Dog, sat beneath the table, near his master as always. Shortly after the soup was served an awful smell permeated the room. No sound, just the horrid smell. The farmer eyes shot down beneath the table. “Dog”, he said sternly. The Preacher muttered “no harm done.” It was passing the potatoes that that the farmer froze, having encountered a wall of putrid, eye-tearing fumes of hell bad smell. His family froze as well. The farmer sat, leaned beneath the table and hissed, “Dog”. The Preacher leaned over and touched the Farmer on the shoulder. “No harm done,” he soothed. The gravy for the mashed potatoes had just been placed before the Farmer, when the smell came once again, a silent tsunami of sulpher and rotting meat. The farmer coughed, glanced at the Preacher and pushed back his chair. Leaning under the table, he commanded, “Dog. Get the hell out from under there before the Preacher damn suffocates you.” It may be wise for the Jews of France to seek other countries for haven for a while. |
| Posted by: Hupomoger Clans9827 2006-02-20 18:48 |
| #8 Trailing Wife, you said: "I'm very happy to see the Jews of France aren't as head-in-the-sand as we'd feared." It's not the French Jews who are head-in-the-sand about Muslims. It's the French people. |
| Posted by: PlanetDan 2006-02-20 17:43 |
| #7 especially the actual French diplomat referring to Israel as "that shitty little country" |
| Posted by: Frank G 2006-02-20 17:17 |
| #6 Based on NS' history of commenting here, I think he was being sarcastic, i.e. writing what he thinks many French secretly feel. |
| Posted by: anon 2006-02-20 16:57 |
| #5 Re #4: A talking chimp! Amazing! Give 'em a banana! |
| Posted by: borgboy 2006-02-20 16:51 |
| #4 If the upshot is all those dirtly little people go back to their sh!++y little country, the French would not be at all averse to letting the muzzies take |
| Posted by: Nimble Spemble 2006-02-20 16:24 |
| #3 Thinking further, it will be interesting to see how the Rothschilds respond to all this. A goodly portion of them converted to Catholicism at one time or another, I understand, but the family still retains strong ties to Judaism and even Israel -- I think they sponsor a kosher winery there, amongst other endeavors (long before Zionism the family supported colonies of scholars in Hebron and such). |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2006-02-20 16:03 |
| #2 Instapundit has a link to more on this story by an Israeli blogger. An interesting bit she dropped was, "I heard about it several days ago, only because my in-laws are French, and the affair has understandably shaken the French Jewish community to the core. We had a large wave of French Jews immigrating to Israel last summer. Something tells me that this summer we're going to have another one." I'm very happy to see the Jews of France aren't as head-in-the-sand as we'd feared. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2006-02-20 13:35 |
| #1 never again. |
| Posted by: RD 2006-02-20 12:37 |