Jewish man kidnapped and murdered by Muslims

[Erikl]

Young Jewish man kidnapped and murdered by gang near Paris

By Shirli Sitbon in Paris Updated: 16/Feb/2006 21:21

French police launched a wide-range investigation on Tuesday after a twenty three-year-old Jewish man was kidnapped and murdered.

Jewish community security services have said they suspect the crime may have been motivated by anti-Semitism.

Ilan Halimi was found critically wounded, naked and hand-cuffed along a railway track in the suburb of Saint Genevieve des Bois, 30 kilometres south of Paris on Monday, three weeks after he was kidnapped by a gang in Paris.

The victim, who was burnt and cut on 80 percent of his body, died of his wounds as he was taken to hospital.

Series of crimes

Judiciary Police Chief Francois Jaspar and general attorney of Paris Jean-Claude Marin said that at least three other similar criminal kidnapping attempts have been reported since last December, but that previous ones have failed.

In each case, one of three young women, a blond, a brunette and an Arab woman, or a young man would attract the victim on a date, during which the victim would be attacked by the rest of the gang. Ilan Halimi was the only victim who was caught by the gang.

Jaspar and Marin did not mention the victim’s Jewish identity or any anti-Semitic aspect in this affair but community security services suspect the kidnappers who tortured the young man may have had anti-Semitic motives.

Anti-Semitism suspected

The French Anti-Semitism Vigilance Bureau (BVCA) has asked the police to investigate and determine whether there is or not an anti-Semitic background to this affair and more specifically whether the gang is targeting Jews.

Sammy Ghozlan, the Bureau’s head, told EJP only one of the four targeted persons was not Jewish.

According to the AFP and Jewish community services, the victim, a cellular phone salesman was attracted by a young Arab woman who came to his place of work, on Voltaire boulevard, in the 11th arrondissement of Paris, on January 17.

Ilan Halimi was kidnapped on the night of January 21, when he was to meet the young woman.

Identikit of one of the women used by the gang to attract their prey

Photo: French Police

After the kidnapping, the gang contacted Ilan’s family and demanded a ransom of 450,000 euros.

Realising the victim’s family was unable to gather such a sum of money, the gang reduced the ransom to 50,000 euros and threatened to kill the young man.

The kidnappers sent a photo of Ilan via the internet with death threats but failed to arrive at several meetings to collect the ransom from the young man’s relatives. The last phone call with the gang was on Thursday.

"We fear that the fact that Ilan was Jewish aggravated his case and caused his abductors to behave as Islamists. Why did the kidnappers, once they discovered that Ilan’s family was not wealthy, as they had thought, not let him go and instead tortured him to death?" asked Sammy Ghozlan.

In a statement, the Anti-Semitism Vigilance Bureau said it "shares the deep emotion of the Jewish community of Paris and in particular of the residents of the 11th district."

Ilan Halimi will be buried Friday at the cemetery of Pantin, in the suburbs of Paris.

SOURCE

Edited February 24, 2006 by Erikl

[__Kratos__]

3 weeks of that torture...son of a ouch... Hopefully they can catch the scumbags.

[Erikl]

Torturers' Iraq link

Jason Burke in Paris

Sunday February 19, 2006

The Observer

Criminals who tortured and killed a young hostage, keeping him naked and hooded and burning him repeatedly before throwing him from a train, were inspired by images from Iraq, according to a French prosecutor.

Jean-Claude Martin, a senior government lawyer, said that the kidnappers, who kept their victim imprisoned for three weeks, were 'repeating things they had seen practised elsewhere'.

Police have distributed a picture of Youssef Fofana, 26, who is the presumed head of the gang. Last week, a young woman, suspected of acting as 'the lure' in the murder, gave herself up. Raids then resulted in the arrest of 15 other suspects, aged between 17 and 32, in a poor suburb of Bagneux, near Paris.

The 23-year-old victim is thought to have been starved and tortured while negotiations with his family for a ransom of up to €450,000 continued. According to a police source, the violence was 'gratuitous, extreme, spontaneous and without any limits or boundaries'.

The gang was composed of jobless youths from the suburbs around Paris which erupted in violent riots last autumn. They are believed to have made several previous attempts at kidnapping. According to the Liberation newspaper, the gang was inspired by a film which had itself been inspired by a press report.

SOURCE

[Erikl]

France sees racist motive in brutal torture death

By Thierry Leveque and Tom Heneghan Mon Feb 20, 6:02 PM ET

PARIS (Reuters) - A young Jewish man who died after being kidnapped and tortured for weeks may have fallen victim to a racist attack, French leaders said on Monday, vowing to catch and punish those responsible for an "unspeakable barbarity."

France has been shocked by the murder of Ilan Halimi, 23, a mobile telephone salesman killed after being held captive for three weeks, and Jewish community leader Roger Cukierman urged the government to "provide the whole truth" about the case.

Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin told Jewish community leaders at their annual dinner that the judge handling the case was investigating leads pointing to an anti-Semitic attack, and said he had ordered his interior and justice ministers to shed all possible light on the affair.

Investigating magistrate Corinne Goetzmann placed seven suspects under formal investigation on Monday for kidnapping, illegal imprisonment, criminal association and "murder linked to the victim's religion."

Their victim Halimi, was found on February 13 lying in agony by a railway line outside Paris, with stab wounds and burns over much of his body. He died on the way to hospital.

Police said a gang led by a man calling himself "brain of the barbarians" used a young woman to lure Halimi into a trap and then detained and tortured him while demanding a ransom.

The gang, whose members are thought to be aged between 17 and 32, are suspected of involvement in six other kidnappings since the end of last year.

They contacted Halimi's family via the Internet, text messages and by telephone, demanding a ransom of 450,000 euros ($537,300). The family was unable to raise the funds.

ANTI-SEMITIC ATTACK?

Until now, police have publicly denied any anti-Semitic link, saying the gang led by an Ivory Coast immigrant with a Muslim name had also attacked non-Jews. But about 1,200 people, mostly Jews, marched in Paris on Sunday to protest against the killing.

"Was Ilan Halimi killed because he was Jewish?" Cukierman, head of the Council of French Jewish Institutions, asked at the dinner attended by Villepin and several ministers.

"Mr Prime Minister, you owe it to our country to tell the truth," he said.

"I ask your government to provide us with the whole truth and nothing but the truth about this affair, and especially about the motivations of the killers," he said.

"We will do everything possible so those who committed this barbarous crime are arrested and brought to justice," Villepin replied.

Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, whose police services have until now been reluctant to class the killing a hate crime, condemned the murder as "an act of unspeakable barbarity."

Justice Minister Pascal Clement told the same dinner one suspect had indicated Halimi was selected "because he was Jewish and because a Jew was rich. That is an aggravating circumstance, it means that the resonance is no longer the same."

France's 600,000-strong Jewish community, Europe's largest, came under rising anti-Semitic attacks earlier this decade, often from disaffected Muslim youths protesting against Israeli policy toward the Palestinians.

Ilan's uncle Rafi Halimi was quoted in the Israeli press as saying the family thought the killing was anti-Semitic and claiming the kidnappers had tried to capture two other Jews.

SOURCE

saying the gang led by an Ivory Coast immigrant with a Muslim name

Will the PC authorities do anything to deny the simple truth that this was done by islamists and islamist terrorism has infaltrated European muslims?

[__Kratos__]

Will the PC authorities do anything to deny the simple truth that this was done by islamists and islamist terrorism has infaltrated European muslims?

Will they see it just might be he was tortured and such for money and not because he was a jew? Yes, it was horrible, very... but is this case because he was tortured for 3 weeks or because it might have been racially motivated against him cause he is jewish?

[Erikl]

Will they see it just might be he was tortured and such for money and not because he was a jew? Yes, it was horrible, very... but is this case because he was tortured for 3 weeks or because it might have been racially motivated against him cause he is jewish?

I think it was a mixture of all three.

Ofcourse the fact he was tortured is far worse then him being Jewish, because he was first a human being.

But the fact that he was Jewish was a motive to his kidnapp as well.

I think we see here a mixture of racism, of crime, and of violence.

What irritates me is that in modern day Europe, a muslim is incapable of carrying hate crime if it's against Jews and Christians.

Only Jewish or Christian Europeans can be accused for such a crime, because obviously only "white people" can carry hate crimes .

[Baku]

Damn wtf killing a human for only 50.000 EU and torure for 3 freakin weeks?? Damn pschychotic racists!

[Saxon]

the torture part makes me believe it was 'racial'... why do you harm the person for ransom?

[DR. YO]

3 WEEKS !!!! They should find these M**** ******. :angry2: :angry2:

This is bad, I fear retribution from the Jewish community. Well in my opinion it would be justified . :angry2:

[Bella-Angelique]

If you look at it from an organized crime perspective, it might have been debated that torturing and killing him in that manner might ensure that a next much wealthier victim's family would take them seriously and pay out the next much higher deman quickly.

Third world style kidnappings and ransom demands are spreading into industrial nations at the same rate as third word immigrants are.

It is not just an islamic immigrant action.

Mexico, South America, Africa, and Asia all have this going on in different locations and it comes into other nations along with the people from those areas.

[Kuahji]

This is just sickening. I almost can't believe another human would do this to another human...

[aquatus1]

I hope this isn't another Life and Passion of Saint William. There was enough innocent blood shed over that lie.