Exactly 16 years ago today, a French Jewish man, Ilan Halimi, was left to die near a railway line. Kidnapped because he was Jewish and thus presumed wealthy, he had been tortured for 3 weeks and finally burned alive. This case horrified France, and showcased a renewal of anti-Semitism in the country
3 comments
Ilan Halimi was a 23 years old salesman living in Paris. On 21 January 2006, he was lured by a woman on the pretense of coming to her place for a drink to an apartment block in the Parisian banlieues.
There, he was ambushed and held captive by the so-called “Gang of Barbarians”, a group of thugs whom had elected to kidnap a Jew and ransom his family because, in their words, *Jews are wealthy*.
The Gang of Barbarians tried to get a 450 000 euros ransom from Ilan Halimi’s family under threat of killing Ilan, but to no avail: his family didn’t have anywhere close to this kind of money, and immediately called the police.
The Gang of Barbarians went on torturing Ilan for the next 24 days out of frustration of not getting their money. In the end, knowing that they wouldn’t get their ransom, they burned him alive in order to erase any trace of their DNA on him, and dumped him near a railway line.
Ilan Halimi was found by a passer-by, still alive, but died on his way to the hospital.
As you can imagine, this story horrified the French public, and it was one of the most commented event of the 2000s in my country.
It showed that a new brand of antisemitism was brewing in the *banlieues*, a form of antisemitism that wasn’t rooted in far-right/conservative catholicism as was common before in France, but rather on islamic and *banlieues* culture.
19 members of the gang were arrested, trialed and convicted. Today, only 4 of them are still in prison, including Youssouf Fofana, their leader.
[More on that topic on Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Ilan_Halimi).
Horrifying 😞
What nationality were the attackers?