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Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler. Albert Einstein |
Ilan Halimi was a young French Jewish man (of Moroccan parentage) kidnapped on 21 January 2006 by a gang called "the Gang of Barbarians" (Gang des Barbares) and subsequently tortured, over a period of three weeks, resulting in his death. The murder was motivated by antisemitism and money.
A total of 27 people were accused as implicated in the crime and were tried for kidnapping and murder in 2009. Gang leader Youssouf Fofana (born 1980 in Paris to immigrants from Ivory Coast) was convicted to a life sentence, eligible for parole after 22 years (the maximum penalty under French law). Others received shorter prison sentences, some suspended, and three were acquitted. While Fofana's life sentence is definite, 14 of the 27 verdicts were appealed. The convictions were upheld on appeal in December 2010.
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According to press reports based on information from French criminal investigation authorities, as of 25 February 2006 the crime is believed to have happened as follows:
Implicated in the crime are the members of a youth gang calling themselves "les barbares" (the Barbarians). The people so far arrested are mostly unemployed children of immigrants from African countries. In total, 27 individuals were under investigation and were subsequently put on trial. Currently, 19 of those individuals have been convicted and imprisoned. These include:
Christophe M-V, aka "Moko", a 22-year-old Martinique French man, specializing in computers. He appears to have masterminded the kidnappings and to have been the lieutenant of Fofana. He was monitoring the honeypot activities of the girls.
On February 22, 2008, six members of the "Barbarians" assaulted 19-year-old Mathieu Roumi in the same Paris suburb of Bagneux where Halimi was killed. For two hours the attackers tortured the young man. One shoved cigarette butts into his mouth, another took issue with Roumi's Jewish origin (paternal), grabbed correction fluid and scrawled "dirty Jew" and an anti-gay insult on his forehead. When the issue of his sexual orientation arose, one of them placed a condom on the tip of a stick and shoved it in Roumi's mouth. The six men proceeded to scream at him and threaten that he would die the way Halimi did. [1][2][3]
The kidnapping seems to be motivated by a combination of anti-semitism and a desire for money.
Police have attributed to the banlieues' gang subculture a "poisonous mentality that designates Jews as enemies along with other 'outsiders,'" such as Americans, mainstream French, and Europeans in general. "If they could have gotten their hands on a (non-Jewish) French cop in the same way, they probably would have done the same thing," a retired police chief opined.
The kidnappers originally thought Halimi was wealthy because he came from a Moroccan Jewish family, though he came from the same poor and working-class neighborhood on the outskirts of Paris as the kidnappers did.
Halimi's uncle Rafi told reporters that some of the telephone calls to the victim's family involved recitations from the Qur'an accompanied by Halimi's tortured screams. The French-Arab and African-Muslim ringleaders recited verses from the Koran in their communications with the family, while Ilan's tortured screams could be heard in the background. It also appeared the gang had an interest in Palestinian group Hamas, as its propaganda material was found by the kidnappers.
The case has found an enormous echo in the French media and in the French public. Six French associations called for a mass demonstration against racism and antisemitism in Paris on Sunday, 26 February. Between 33,000 (as estimated by police) and 80,000 to 200,000 (as estimated by the organizers) people participated in Paris, as well as thousands around the country. Also present were public figures such as Nicolas Sarkozy, Jean-Marie Lustiger and Lionel Jospin. Right-wing politician Philippe de Villiers was booed by far-left militants and had to leave under police guard.
Ruth Halimi, Ilan's mother, subsequently co-authored a book with Emilie Freche entitled “24 Days” that was released in April 2009. In the book, Ruth claimed that French police never suspected her son's kidnappers would kill the 23-year-old after three weeks in captivity in 2006, partly because they would not face the anti-Semitic character of the crime, the French daily Le Figaro reported. In an interview with Le Figaro, Emilie Freche stated that “by denying the anti-Semitic character, [police] did not figure out the profile of the gang.” The book details how Ilan's parents were told to stay silent during the ordeal and were ordered not to seek aid in order to pay the ransom, nor show their son's photo to people who might have come forward with information about his whereabouts.
In an interview with Elle Magazine on March 27, 2009, Ruth wrote that “The police were completely off the mark. They thought they were dealing with classic bandits, but these people were beyond the norm.” Halimi stated that she wrote the book to “alert public opinion to the danger of anti-Semitism which has returned in other forms, so that a story like this can never happen again.”
The event caused an international outcry.
On May 9, the Helsinki Commission held a briefing titled "Tools for Combating Anti-Semitism: Police Training and Holocaust Education" chaired by Commission Co-Chairman Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.) who said: "His tragedy made brutally clear that Jews are still attacked because they are Jews, and that our work to eradicate all forms of anti-Semitism in all its ugly forms and manifestations is far from done."
At the request of the family, the remains of Ilan Halimi were reburied in Har HaMenuchot cemetery Israel on Friday, Feb. 9, 2007.
It was timed to allow his first Yartzeit, on Tu Bishvat, to pass before the reburial. The date and time (11:30am) also marked "exactly one year after his burial in France according to the Jewish Calendar."
In May 2011, a garden in the XIIème arrondissement of Paris was renamed after him. Ilan used to play in this garden as a child.
The trial began Wednesday, 29 April 2009.
Notwithstanding requests for an open public trial by many, including Halimi's mother and the family of key suspect Youssouf Fofana, the trial was held behind closed doors.
The judge defended his exclusion of the public and the media by saying that two of the 27 suspects were juveniles at the time of the crime. French law does not require open trials for juveniles.
Fofana claimed in court that he had friends who would "take pictures to identify people." Francis Szpiner, lawyer for the Halimi family, believed that Fofana was alluding to the jurors, and was implying that he was going to put a price on their heads.
When the judge refused to quiet Fofana, the Halimi family and their lawyer (who previously said "It was the law of silence that killed Ilan Halimi and it has imposed itself again" regarding the decision to bar journalists from the trial) left the courtroom.
A report dated approximately halfway into the trial's projected 10 weeks was headlined "Court tosses defendant in Halimi trial after he hurls shoes" and it noted that "reports about the trial are communicated through intermediaries who have access to the trial." Other reports indicated that, as a result of this incident, the judge suspended the trial. Subsequent reports dated about 2 weeks later indicated that the prosecution's counsel, Philippe Bilger, recommended life in prison for ring-leader Youssouf Fofana, 20 years for Fofana's two closest associates, and 12 years for the woman who lured Halimi to his death.
On Friday, 10 July 2009, Fofana was sentenced to life, with minimum of 22 years of imprisonment. Under French law, he is eligible for parole after 22 years.
Murder victim Ilan Halimi's mother and other Sabbath observers were "absent from the court Friday night because of the Sabbath."
Sentences for the others varied, while verdicts for suspects who were minors at the time of the crime were not publicly disclosed. Samir Aït Abdelmalek, 30, and Jean-Christophe Soumbou, 23, the two main accomplices, were sentenced to 18 and 15 years.
Also sentenced to 15 years was a third defendant, who was a minor at the time of the kidnap/murder.
Sorour Arbabzadeh aka "Yalda" or "Emma", a then-17 year old French-Iranian girl who acted as a honeypot to lure Halimi into the gang's lair, was sentenced to 9 years.
The verdict of this trial included acquittals for two of those on trial and one or more suspended sentences.
The sentences issued after the first trial were criticized as too lenient, and the attorney general, upon the instigation of Minister of Justice Michèle Alliot-Marie, announced an appeal of 14 out of the 27 verdicts, including those of the two main co-defendants, Samir Aït Abdelmalek (15 years, prosecution asked for 20 years) and Jean Christophe Soumbou (18 years, prosecution asked for 20 years).
Richard Prasquier, president of CRIF, France's main Jewish organization, said that a law may soon be available that would preclude closed-door trials in this type of case. "Perhaps in a year's time there will be a new trial, and perhaps it will be public." A Halimi relative said: "The important thing for me is not handing out heavier jail terms, honestly. The important thing is to open this to the press and public and make it a learning experience."
The retrial was officially announced Monday 10 July 2009. It started on 25 October 2010 and ended on December 17, 2010, with all convictions upheld and time added to some sentences.
Ilan Halimi
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