PARIS (EJP)--- Ilan Halimi, the 23-year-old Jewish man whose atrocious murder a year ago shocked France, will be buried in Jerusalem on 9 February.

In what police are now admitting was an anti-Semitic attack, Halimi was kidnapped in January last year and then tortured for three weeks before being left to die.

His body will leave France for Israel on an El Al plane on 8 February.

Meanwhile, the French Jewish community will offer a Sefer Torah (Torah scroll) in memory of Halimi during a ceremony Sunday 28 January in the Rue St-Lazare Paris synagogue in the presence of politicians, leaders of the community and his family.

The Sefer Torah will be sent to the Western Wall in Jerusalem two days after his burial.

In another memorial, a forest will be planted in his name in Israel.

A cruel murder

Halimi, a cellular phone salesman, went missing on 21 January 2006 after apparently having been lured into a sex-trap by a young woman who came to the shop where he worked in centre of Paris.

He was held and tortured for three weeks in an apartment estate in Bagneux, a poor multi-ethnic suburb, by a gang that sent ransom demands to Ilan’s family.

Halimi died shortly after being found critically wounded, naked and hand-cuffed along a railway track in the suburb of Sainte-Genevieve des Bois, 30 kilometres south of Paris. Picture AFP Copyright 2006

The kidnappers sent a photo of Ilan via the internet with death threats but failed to arrive at several meetings to collect the ransom from the young man’s relatives.

Halimi died shortly after being found critically wounded, naked and hand-cuffed along a railway track in the suburb of Sainte-Genevieve des Bois, 30 kilometres south of Paris. He was tortured and left with burn marks over four-fifths of his body.

Claims

A group who called themselves the “gang of the Barbarous” claimed responsibility for the murder.

The gang’s head, Youssouf Fofana, a 25-year-old French petty criminal of Ivorian origin, was arrested in early March 2006 in the Ivory Coast and extradited to France.

Fofana’s gang apparently used young women as bait to lure their victims, and were suspected of being behind two other extortion rackets that involved threatening doctors, businessmen and minor celebrities.

During police questioning the man who was called the “brain of the barbarians” is reported to have said the gang had targeted Halimi because they presumed Jews were wealthy.

Still today he reportedly expresses no feeling of remorse for Halimi’s heinous kidnapping and murder which was carried out “for money”.

Traumatised

Halimi’s horrific death traumatised the country with its brutality and unsettled the Jewish community, which staged a massive march against racism and anti-Semitism.

After initial reluctance, French authorities have said they believe anti-Semitism was part of the gang’s motives.

In spite of her pain, Ruth Halimi, Ilan’s mother, spoke to the media this week one year after the tragedy.

She called on the French government to take measures to get young people, whatever their religion, be taught essentials values, particularly within the family environment.