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Ruth Halimi has called for a public trial so that her son's death "will not have been in vain".
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PARIS (EJP)---The mother of Ilan Halimi, a young Parisian Jew brutally murdered in 2006 by a gang, has called for a public trial so that her son's death "will not have been in vain".
The trial of Youssouf Fofana, a 29-year-old Frenchman of Ivorian origin, and 27 others suspected members of the so-called "gang of barbarians", will open in Paris on April 29.
It is scheduled to be held behind closed doors at a juvenile court, because two of the 27 gang members allegedly behind Halimi's murder were minors at the time of the act.
French law allows for a public trial to be held in certain cases where juveniles are involved.
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Youssouf Fofana, head of the 'gang of barbarians', was arrested in March 2006 in the Ivory Coast and extradited to France.
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A public trial should help better understand the criminal machine, to make parents and teenagers reflect. It’s the law of silence that killed her son, it would be unbearable for the trial to remain silent,” Francis Szpyner, lawyer of Ruth Halimi, said.
Ilan Halimi, a 23-year-old mobile phone salesman, went missing in Paris in January 2006. After being lured by a young woman from the mobile phone shop where he worked, he was held captive for more than three weeks in a Paris suburb.
Authorities found him naked, handcuffed and covered with burn marks from cigarettes near railroad tracks south of Paris on February 13, 2006.
He died on the way to the hospital, having bled to death from stab wounds to his neck.
Halimi’s abductors had tortured him while demanding a 450,000 euros ransom from his family and the Jewish community.
The grisly anti-Semitic crime shocked France and its 600,000-strong Jewish community.
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Ilan Halimi was reburied at the Givat Shaul cemetery in Jerusalem in February 2007.
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fter two years of investigation, the magistrate came to the conclusion that Fofana ordered a young pretty woman to target Halimi because he was Jewish and because they presumed Jews were wealthy.
Fofana was arrested in March 2006 in the Ivory Coast and extradited to France.
After initial reluctance, French authorities had said they believed anti-Semitism was behind te gang’s motives.
At his mother demand, Ilan Halimi was reburied at the Givat Shaul cemetery in Jerusalem in February 2007.