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Thursday, February 23, 2006

At Judeoscope: Halimi murder: House searches produce pro-Palestinian, Salafi documents

French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy revealed that house-searches of suspects related to the brutal murder and torture of a yong Jewish man, 23-year-old Ilan Halimi, produced Salafi (radical Islamic) and pro-Palestinian documents.

According to Sarkozy, documents of support for the Comité de bienfaisance et de secours aux Palestiniens (CBSP) were uncovered. The organization is accused by Israel and the US of sponsoring Hamas. Though the US ordered in 2003 that its assets be frozen, the CBSP is not featured on European lists of organizations considered to be terrorist. The other documents found in the house-searches were described by Sarkozy as Salafi decrees.

The French government considers the murder to be an anti-Semitic crime.

Also, Nidra Poller has some interesting facts in her Wall Street Journal piece, The Murder of Ilan Halimi. It's paid subscription only, but here is a snip:

...In initial statements to the press, Public Prosecutor Jean-Claude Marin and various police officials stuck to their hypothesis that money was the motive for the crime, not anti-Semitism. They noted that Ilan Halimi had been tortured as if the gang were following "a known scenario." Photos of Ilan, naked, with a sack on his head and a gun pointed at his temple were emailed to family members suggesting, according to the police, "scenes of torture at Abu Ghraib." As it turns out, the beheading of Daniel Pearl or Iraqi snuff films are the better comparison. An anonymous police detective quoted in Monday's edition of Libération said: "It's simply that, for those criminals, Jew equals money."

Later that same day, investigating magistrate Corinne Goetzmann detained seven of the suspects on charges of kidnapping, sequestration, torture, acts of barbarism and premeditated murder in an organized gang. They will also be charged with targeting the victim on the basis of his religion, French for hate crime, which carries a stiffer penalty. Justice Minister Pascal Clément explained that the charge of anti-Semitism was based on the fact that one of the suspects had declared to the judge that they picked a Jew because Jews are supposed to be rich. But, according to reports in the French press, some of the suspects in police custody said that they tortured Ilan with particular cruelty simply because he was Jewish.

No longer able to deny or play down the racial motive, the investigation is entering a new phase. One of the most troubling aspects of this affair is the probable involvement of relatives and neighbors, beyond the immediate circle of the gang, who were told about the Jewish hostage and dropped in to participate in the torture.

Ilan's uncle Rafi Halimi told reporters that the gang phoned the family on several occasions and made them listen to the recitation of verses from the Quran, while Ilan's tortured screams could be heard in the background. The family has publicly criticized the police for deliberately ignoring the explicit anti-Semitic motives, which were repeatedly expressed and should have dictated an entirely different approach to the case from the start. Police searches have now revealed the presence of Islamist literature in the home of at least one of the gang members...

...The murder of Ilan Halimi invites comparison with the November 2003 killing of a Jewish disc jockey, Sébastien Selam. His Muslim neighbor, Adel, slit his throat, nearly decapitating him, and gouged out his eyes with a carving fork in his building's underground parking garage. Adel came upstairs with bloodied hands and told his mother, "I killed my Jew, I will go to paradise." In the two years before his murder, the Selam family was repeatedly harassed for being Jewish. The Selam case has not been opened by the magistrate. The murderer, who admits his guilt, was placed in a psychiatric hospital, and may be released soon...

Update: Allison Kaplan Sommer notes that the head of the gang that murdered Halimi has been caught in the Ivory Coast where he fled. She also has a number of links to press coverage you may want to take a look at. (via PJM)

Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: Ilan Halimi.

TrackBack URL for this entry: http://www.solomonia.com/cgi-bin/mt4/mt-renamedtb.cgi/5744

» Still More on the Ports at the blog A Lady's Ruminations

Why are we not allowed to question the deal and learn more about what exactly is going on? The White House ought to have competent answers for reasonable questions. We have had reasonable questions. Read More

Por si no hubiéramos tenido suficiente con el asesinato de Ilan Halimi, otro ataque antisemita ha tenido lugar. Anne Barth, a French social worker in Schiltigheim (suburb of Strasbourg), was victim of an anti-Semitic attack on Friday morning. A... Read More

Por si no hubiéramos tenido suficiente con el asesinato de Ilan Halimi, otro ataque antisemita ha tenido lugar. Anne Barth, a French social worker in Schiltigheim (suburb of Strasbourg), was victim of an anti-Semitic attack on Friday morning. At 10AM,... Read More

4 Comments

"No longer able to deny or play down the racial motive, the investigation is entering a new phase."

"racial motive" is a wrong description: Jewishness is not a racial trait, and attacking a Jew for its jewishness is a genocidal, antisemitic act.

For his jewishness.

Could someone please explain to me what the Paris police were up to all this time? The gang had him for 3 WEEKS, during which they PHONED THE VICTIMS FAMILY!

In the US we'd have the sense to put a tap on the phone, trace the location of the calls, stake out the location...Are the Paris police really that inept?

Stephanie:
No French cops are quite efficent and effetive. It's as Solomonia sates: the cops realy realy screwed up by downplaying the antisemtic nature of the kidnapping. The exasprating thing about this murder was that it wasn't the first time that this gang carried out such barbaric acts.There was another kidnapping with murder and at least 3 failed attempts
Glad that the leader was a fool to return to the Ivory Coast where the French have such a presence. I do hope that he's made an example and get life in prision and is isolated from the main prison population so that he's not adulated as some kind of hero
Lefigaro.fr has updates on the case.

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