Grisly murder of Jewish man sparks anti-Semitism fears

PARIS - One of the most horrific murders in recent French history has inflamed fears of anti-Semitism and a resurgence of ethnic violence in the nation's bleak housing estates.

Last week, Ilan Halimi, a 23-year telephone salesman, was found dumped in a suburban Paris railway station. Gagged and handcuffed, with dozens of cuts and burns to his body, he died before he reached hospital.

Halimi, described as a caring and charming young man, was last seen by his family in late January. That was before he swapped numbers with a pretty woman who struck up a conversation in his small phone shop.

It was a trap. Lured to a rendezvous by the young woman, Halimi was snatched by a gang calling itself the Barbarians which held him in Bagneux, on the southern rim of Paris.

For the next three weeks, Halimi was bound naked and abused as the gang demanded a ransom, initially insisting on $450,000 ($814,000) before dropping and raising their demands, while the police hunted.

No money was paid, apparently because of the incoherence of the gang's demands, and eventually Halimi was tortured to death.

Initially considered simply as a criminal, but nightmarish, act, the event is now snowballing into a complex issue.

Investigators, after getting a break that enabled them to net a number of suspects, believe anti-Semitism was behind the crime.

Halimi was Jewish, and despite his modest background, as one of three children in a single-parent household, the gang apparently believed that it could extort money from his family or the Jewish community.

"These thugs had mainly criminal motives," Interior Nicolas Sarkozy told the National Assembly. But they were convinced that "Jews have money, and that even if those they kidnapped did not, the community would rally round".

Four out of six other people that the Barbarians had previously tried to kidnap were Jewish, Sarkozy said. "This is called anti-Semitism by association," he declared.

The affair has struck horror across the country, but especially in its half million Jews, the largest Jewish group in Europe.

Even so, there remains a reluctance in some quarters to leap at this point to the conclusion that anti-Semitism was the major culprit, given that two previous high-profile scares about anti-Semitic violence in the past two years have proved to be bogus and that the Halimi probe is still in its earliest stages.

The principal suspect, 25-year-old Youssof Fofana, is believed to have fled to Ivory Coast.

As more details of the case are leaked by investigators, a terrifying picture is starting to emerge of Halimi's ordeal while being held in a 10th-floor flat and freezing basement.

The suspected gang members - a mixture of individuals of African, Arab and European descent - lived on the estate, including Fofana, who had a long criminal record and was deeply feared locally.

Police are investigating why a caretaker gave the gang a set of keys to the empty flat.

The estate is riddled with petty criminals, thugs and drug takers, and many of the residents - typically poor whites, immigrants and beleaguered single mothers - are too exhausted by life to notice something amiss or too fearful of revenge if they speak out.

"Everyone here lives in a bubble, no one talks and everyone is on their guard, said a local woman, who gave her name as Yvette. "When youths hang out menacingly in the building entrance, no one dares to complain about it. You don't even dare go and pick up your mail when the dope smokers are there. "You hurry into the lift and get into your flat for fear of reprisals. That's why nobody suspected anything bad.

The episode pours cold water over Sarkozy's assertions that security on the housing estates is gradually improving after the riots between youths and police last November that for a while turned many areas into no-go zones.

"The neighbours or the relatives of the kidnappers must have heard of what was going on, but no one budged," said Halimi's sister, Yael. "People knew. Did no one feel any pity for him?"

The escape route

According to Israeli statistics, 2545 people from France moved to Israel last year, versus 2003 in 2004.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon last year urged French Jews to move to Israel to escape anti-Semitism.

Israel said there were 21,126 newcomers in 2005, up slightly from 20,893 in 2004.

Over the last five years, 203,000 people moved to Israel. Nearly 1 million, mostly from Soviet states, emigrated in the 1990s.