Convictions Upheld For 16 Involved In Murderer Of Ilan Halimi

In July 2009, the murderers of Ilan Halimi were sentenced:

A Paris court on Friday convicted a gang leader of the brutal 2006 killing of a young man prosecutors said was targeted because he was Jewish.

Youssouf Fofana, 28, was sentenced to life in prison. He was one of 27 people on trial in the kidnapping, torture and murder of Ilan Halimi, who was 23 years old.

Appeal Granted In Trial Of The Murderers of Ilan Halimi

It started in February 2006 when the news was first reported:

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.

Even then, you had the sense that the media wanted to minimize what had happened and its implications:

o The victim's name (Ilan Halimi) was withheld.
o The fact that the victim was Jewish was not mentioned.
o The fact that the missing gangleader is Moslem was omitted.
o The possibility that when a Moslem kills a Jew there may be anti-Semitism was ignored.

Haaretz reported at the time:

"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." The umbrella group of French Jewish secular organizations, CRIF, issued a statement Friday calling on the Jewish community "to keep calm, cautious and wait for developments in the investigation."

Eventually, the nature of the murder was admitted.

In April, all those involved were put on trial--behind closed doors, and on July 10 the verdict was announced:

A Paris court on Friday convicted a gang leader of the brutal 2006 killing of a young man prosecutors said was targeted because he was Jewish.

Youssouf Fofana, 28, was sentenced to life in prison. He was one of 27 people on trial in the kidnapping, torture and murder of Ilan Halimi, who was 23 years old.

Halimi was found naked, handcuffed and covered with burn marks near railroad tracks in the Essonne region south of Paris on Feb. 13, 2006. He died on the way to the hospital after being held captive for more than three weeks. The horrific death revived worries in France about lingering anti-Semitism and led to deep anxiety in France's Jewish community, the largest in western Europe.

As the verdict was announced, Fofana, who headed the self-styled "gang of barbarians," mimicked applause. Fofana's sentence means he will have no possibility of parole for 22 years.

His two main accomplices, Samir Ait Abdelmalek and Jean-Christophe Soumbou, were given sentences of 15 and 18 years, respectively. Another man who was a minor at the time also received a 15-year prison term, while Emma, a young girl used to attract Halimi, was sentenced to nine years in prison.

Two people, a man and a woman, were acquitted.

A lawyer for the Halimi family, Francis Szpiner, immediately called on France's justice minister to appeal the verdict because, he said, the sentences that went to the top lieutenant's of Fofana were too light and did not reflect the gravity of the crime.

Last week, it was announced that a French court had approved an appeal for longer sentences for those involved in the Halimi murder:

Fourteen of those convicted in the brutal slaying of young French Jew Ilan Halimi will face an appeal for increased jail terms. The appeal was granted following intervention from Justice Minister Michele Alliot-Marie.

Some French jurists protested the move, and accused Alliot-Marie of giving in to political pressure.

A court had sentenced two people who took part in holding Halimi captive and torturing him to between 15 and 18 years in prison, while a woman who lured Halimi to within kidnappers' reach was sentenced to nine years. Prosecutors had requested that the attackers be sentenced to 20 and 12 years respectively.

Several members of the gang that carried out the murder were sentenced to as few as six months in prison.

Besides prison sentences more fitting for those who committed this heinous crime, perhaps the appeal will somehow increase the exposure that the crime has received in the media.

Related articles by Zemanta:

• 14 Convicted in Jew's Killing Will Be Retried in France
• Analysis: A conspiracy of silence
• Gang Jailed For Anti-Semitic Torture Death
• France Mulls Anti-Semitic Killers' Retrial
• Analysis: We need focus on why he was killed

Ilan Hlimi, Anti-Semitism, France

Who Was Walther Rathenau?

The European Jewish Press has an article about the Jewish youth who was attacked in France and is now in a coma. This is in addition to the murder of Halimi in 2006, the attack on the Grand Rabbi of the Nord Pas de Calais last year, and the French Jew abducted and tortured this past March.

In the margin of the European Jewish Press article there is a blurb:

1922: German Jewish minister killed
Foreign Minister Walter Rathenau assassinated by nationalists.

A quick check at Wikipedia gives the background.

Apparently assassins are heroes:

On 1922 June 24, two months after the signing of the Treaty of Rapallo, Rathenau was assassinated in a plot led by two right-wing army officers (aided and abetted by others) linked to Organisation Consul: Erwin Kern and Hermann Fischer.[4] On that morning, he was driving from his house to Wilhelmstraße, as he did daily (and predictably). During the trip his car was passed by another in which three armed men were sitting. They simultaneously shot at the minister with machine guns and then quickly drove away. A memorial stone in the Koenigsallee in Berlin-Grunewald marks the scene of the crime, which was officially (with flags legally at half mast) but not necessarily fervently mourned in Germany. After the Nazis came to power in 1933, they declared Rathenau's assassins as national heroes and designated June 24 as a holiday of celebration. One of the assassins was the future writer Ernst von Salomon——he had provided the car but was not present at the shooting. Curiously, he managed to stay out of the Nazi party and had a Jewish wife, whom he managed to protect throughout the Nazi years largely because of his credibility with the Nazis in having facilitated Rathenau's assassination. His anti-American book after the war, Der Fragebogen ("The Questionaire"), about the history of Germany between 1918 to 1946, was one of the bestsellers in West Germany while simultaneously being banned in U.K. schools for being anti-British.

Apparently, in England being an assassin was not enough of a reason to ban von Salomon's book.

Technorati Tag: Walter+Rathenau and France and Anti-Semitism.

Charles Enderlin Again Protected By The French Courts

Apparently in France, denouncing Anti-Semitism can make you an Anti-Semite.

In "Are the Al-Dura Critics Anti-Semites?" John Rosenthal details the case of Nicolas Ciarapica, who blogs at Blogdei. Ciarapica quoted from the article “French Jews Are Completely Fed Up,” by the editor-in-chief The Metula News Agency, Stéphane Juffa--and was accused of the “racial defamation” of Charles Enderlin:

“French Jews Are Completely Fed Up” consists precisely of a denunciation of anti-Semitism in France. Indeed, the immediate context for Juffa’s piece is the most heinous anti-Semitic crime in recent French history: the murder of Ilan Halimi. Halimi was the young French Jew who in early 2006 was kidnapped and then savagely tortured over a period of three weeks by a gang from Bagneux in the Parisian banlieues. Interrogated by the police, members of the gang - appropriately enough called the “Barbarians” - made no secret of the anti-Semitic prejudice that animated the group.

In the first part of “French Jews Are Completely Fed Up”, Stéphane Juffa connects the open anti-Semitism of Ilan Halimi’s tormentors to the distorted representation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the French media and, in particular, to Charles Enderlin’s Al-Dura report on France2. “Is it so hard to understand,” he writes,

that the Islamist-wannabe thugs of Bagneux imagined that in torturing to death Ilan Halimi, they were avenging, among others, the “martyrdom” of little Mohammed Al-Dura, which was staged by Talal Abu-Rahma with commentary by Enderlin and broadcast for free in France and to the four corners of the globe by [the French public broadcasting company] France Télévisions.

In part two, Juffa connects the distortions of the French media in turn to France’s traditionally pro-Arab Middle East policy: commonly known as “la politique arabe de la France” or “French Arab Policy.” He then returns to the question of the consequences for French Jews: offering a typology of different ways that French Jews respond to the anti-Semitism in their environment. The passage is worth translating at some length: both for its own sake and so that the reader - apparently unlike Nicolas Bonnal, the presiding judge in the Ciarapica case - can appreciate the context of the passage that the Parisian court would judge to be anti-Semitic. Enderlin’s name appears amidst a list of several French Jewish journalists, all of whom are accused by Juffa of having incited anti-Jewish hatred through false or tendentious reporting. [emphasis added]

When Nicolas Ciarapica was found guilty in February of having “racially defamed” Charles Enderlin, he had to pay 1 euro in damages plus court costs.

But the French court required him to do one more thing:

In addition, Ciarapica has been required to publicize the judgment on his website for two months. Visitors to Blogdei are currently greeted on the homepage and indeed all pages by a boxed message in all capital letters that reads: “NICOLAS CIARAPICA, THE DIRECTOR OF THIS PUBLICATION, HAS BEEN FOUND GUILTY OF RACIAL OR RELIGIOUS DEFAMATION WITH REGARDS TO CHARLES ENDERLIN.” When one clicks on the box, a window opens up containing a somewhat longer message, which specifies that Ciarapica’s offense was to have insulted Enderlin “by virtue of his belonging to the Jewish community.” Nicolas Ciarapica has thus been obliged by the court to wear a sort of electronic scarlet letter, clearly branding him as an anti-Semite.

Whatever else may be happening in the actual Al-Dura trial, elsewhere the French judicial system is still intent on protecting Charles Enderlin from criticism.

Crossposted at Soccer Dad

Technorati Tag: Charles Enderlin and Nicolas Ciarapica.

Another Jew Abducted And Tortured In France

Two years ago, Ilan Halimi was murdered by a Muslim gang in France. Last month Mathieu Roumi was kidnapped--both Jews.

The affair began in a manner almost exactly reminiscent of the Ilan Halimi case. Like Halimi, Mathieu Roumi was abducted in his own neighborhood in the same quarter. Like Halimi, Roumi was held in a dark cellar.

Like Halimi, Roumi was subjected to physical and emotional abuse. Like Halimi, Roumi was blamed for being a Jew. Like Halimi, Roumi's kidnappers intended to demand ransom for his release. Here ends the similarity between the cases. Halimi was brutally murdered; Roumi went home.

At the time of the Halimi murder, Caroline Glick decried the lack of response in Israel:

o No Israeli official condemned his murder.

o No Israeli official demanded French authorities investigate why the police were so slow to take anti-Semitism into account while Halimi was held captive

o No Israeli official flew to Paris to participate in Ilan's funeral

o The Foreign Ministry's Web site has no mention of Halimi's murder.

o The Israeli Embassy in Paris did not publicly express its condolences to the Halimi family until February 23--10 days after Ilan was found.

o The French press has noted that the Israeli media has not given the story prominent coverage.

o Halimi's murder has not appeared on the front pages of the papers or at the top of the television or radio broadcasts.

The lack of response could have been part of a pattern, comparable to the 7 years it took Israel to respond to the Al-Dura hoax and over a decade it took Israel to decide to actively seek the repeal the UN Resolution equating Zionism with Racism. Today, with the improved relations Israel has with France with Sarkozy in charge--and the fact Roumi survived his ordeal--Israel might not want to make an issue of what happened.

The fact remains though that the ones who abducted and tortured Roumi are not only from the same neighborhood as the gang that killed Halimi, they also identified themselves as members of the same group--two of them came from Muslim homes.

The lessons of the Halimi murder have not been learned, and Anti-Semitism in France is not going to go away just because Sarkozy is now President of France.

Technorati Tag: Ilan+Halimi and Mathieu Roumi.