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.


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.

...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.

Afterwards, a lawyer for the Halimi family appealed the verdict.
The family felt the sentences handed out were too lenient.

Finally, last week, the decision of the court on those appeals in the Halimi case was handed down:

A French appeals court on Friday upheld the convictions of 16 people for their roles in the 2006 kidnapping, torture and murder of a young French Jew, handing down sentences of up to 18 years in prison.

The appeals court in Creteil near Paris heard appeals of defendants already convicted by a lower court into the slaying of Ilan Halimi, who was lured by a young woman and then abducted and killed.

The ringleader, Youssouf Fofana, was not on trial in the proceedings that began Oct. 25. He chose not to appeal his conviction and life sentence.

Two of his close associates, Jean-Christophe Soumbou and Samir Ait Abdel Malek, were sentenced to 18 years behind bars in the verdict Friday. A state prosecutor had sought 20 years for each. Malek had previously been sentenced to 15 years; Soumbous' penalty was unchanged.

The case is now closed, and justice may have been served, but all along one fact about the Halimi murder has been played down:

Yet one detail was consistently played down by the investigators and missing from the early media reporting on the killing. The victim, whose full name is Ilan Halimi, was Jewish. Most of the men targeted in other kidnapping attempts were Jewish. Most members of the gang who allegedly carried out the crime are Muslims, whose families come from the Maghreb or sub-Saharan Africa and live in the very sort of neighborhoods that went up in flames during three weeks of nationwide rioting last fall.

Riots and car burnings still occur in France.
Are Jews in France today any safer?

Technorati Tag: Ilan Halimi.