French Jewish community security sources have joined the family of murdered Paris Jew Ilan Halimi in blaming anti-Semitism for the killing.
“We think there is anti-Semitism in this affair,” Rafi, Ilan’s brother in law, told EJP.
"First because the killers tried to kidnap at least two other Jews and secondly because of what they said on the phone. When we said we didn’t have 500,000 euros to give them they answered we should go to the synagogue and get it,” Rafi stressed.
“They also recited verses from the Koran. We didn’t know what they were saying but the police told us."
Ilan’s mother, Ruth, revealed to the press that the police told the family to ignore the gang’s attempts to contact them for five critical days, after which his son was found near death outside a city, 30 kilometres from Paris.
She also accused police of ignoring the anti-Semitic motivation of the murder in order not to alienate Muslims.
“If Ilan hadn’t been Jewish, he wouldn't have been murdered,” she said.
French daily Le Monde revealed that one of the people arrested told police that the gang had chosen “Jewish targets.”
Some 1,000 people attended the young man’s burial ceremony at a Jewish cemetery in Paris on Friday.
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Burial ceremony for Ilan Halimi at the Jewish cemetery of Pantin
Photo: Alain Azria |
But the Paris prosecutor said there was "so far no evidence of an
anti-Semitic motive" and that the gang was apparently driven by money.
Text messages and emails showing pictures of him, captive and blindfolded, had been sent to his family along with demands for a 400,000-euro ransom.
According to the prosecutor, however, Halimi was tortured in scenes
reminiscent of the abuse of prisoners at Baghdad’s notorious Abu Ghraib jail.
Naked prisoner
Held prisoner in a Bagneux apartment, "naked, with his face covered," he was abused in "a repetition of scenes seen elsewhere", the prosecutor said.
Marin also said the ringleader had repeated his ransom demands in a
telephone call to Halimi’s family on Thursday, days after the young man’s body was found, threatening them with death unless they paid.
Police quoted in the French press had questioned whether money was the real motive, one saying the gang appeared to playing a sadistic "game".
The gang had lowered its ransom demands from 400,000 euros to 100,000 then dropping them as low as 5,000 euros, before it eventually broke off contact.
The breakthrough in the investigation came on Thursday, when a young blonde woman turned herself in to police, saying she had recognized herself in a computer-generated portrait of a suspect circulated to the press.
She confirmed that she had been asked to entice two young men, without knowing what they risked, but had failed to draw them in.
The young women, who has also been detained, agreed to lead police to the other gang members.
The gang’s method of using sex to lure in kidnap victims mirrors the plot of a 1990s French film, "L’Appat" (The Bait).