the kidnap and murder of a young Jew shocked the country.
23-year old Jewish telephone salesman Ilan Halimi was found naked with horrific injuries, three weeks after he was kidnapped by an extortion gang, police said. Halimi was apparently lured into a trap by a young woman, who he had dated. Marchers lit candles and released white balloons in his memory.
The suspected gang leader, 25-year-old Youssef Fofana, has been arrested in his native Ivory Coast. He allegedly said Halimi was picked because he was a Jew, and therefore presumed to be rich. Halimi’s family was unable to pay the $537,000 ransom.
Interim Ivory Coast Prime Minister Charles Konan Banny has reportedly said he does not think the crime had an anti-Semitic connotation.
Thirteen others have been indicted in Paris in the case, of whom 11 are being held. Five more have been detained elsewhere in France and a suspect has been arrested in Belgium, news reports said.
FRENCH GOVERNMENT
Sunday’s march in Paris drew several members of the French government, including Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy and Culture Minister Donnedieu de Vabres.
Politicians from left and right joined the marchers under banners declaring "France united against barbarism" to express their shock over the gang killing.
"There is no political connotation (to the march). This is a demonstration by the people of France who are more than outraged by what happened," said Joseph Sitruk, France’s chief rabbi in an interview with Reuters news agency.
"REST IN PEACE"
Thousands more people marched in other cities including in the southwestern city of Bordeaux, where protesters marched behind a photograph of Halimi reading: "Rest in peace, Ilan."
French President Jacques Chirac and Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin attended a memorial ceremony for Halimi on Thursday, February 23. The murder has outraged many in France, which has Europe’s largest Muslim and Jewish minorities. Muslims number about 5 million and Jews 600,000.
Arabs and Jews are immigrants and live uneasily side-by-side in poor neighborhoods, observers say. Disaffected Muslim youths were widely blamed for a wave of anti-Semitic violence earlier this decade.
NO ISOLATED INCIDENT
However in a commentary, The Jerusalem Post newspaper said anti-Semitism was not just "an internal French" matter.
"It should concern all of us in the Jewish state. We mustn’t be wary of speaking up lest we offend French sensibilities," the paper commented.
"[Prime Minister] Ariel Sharon didn’t shrink a few years back from calling on French Jews to make aliya. Our government’s concern over the Halimi murder should be conveyed directly to the French government at the highest levels," the newspaper said. (With reports from France and Israel and BosNewsLife Research).
