Man Sentenced to Life In Killing Of Jew In France

July 10, 2009

Author: Steven Erlanger

Source: The New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/11/world/europe/11france.html?_r=1&emc=tnt&tntemail0=y

One of the most sensational criminal cases in France, which brought comparisons to the Dreyfus case and involved charges of racial and religious hatred, ended late Friday with the conviction of Youssouf Fofana for murdering a young Jewish man.

In a closed jury trial that began April 29, Mr. Fofana was found guilty of the 2006 kidnapping, torture and murder of the man, Ilan Halimi, who was 23. Mr. Fofana, 28, who was born in France to nominally Muslim immigrants from Ivory Coast, was given the maximum sentence: life in prison with no possibility of parole for 22 years. As the sentence was announced, Mr. Fofana mimicked applause.

His two most active accomplices received sentences of 15 and 18 years in prison, and others received sentences of from 6 months to 9 years. Two defendants were acquitted.

The details of the case were particularly horrifying. Mr. Halimi, who had worked at a telephone store, was kidnapped Jan. 20, 2006. He was bound with tape, beaten, slashed, stabbed and burned with cigarettes and acid. He was then dumped and tied naked to a tree, barely alive, 24 days later, in a wooded area near a train station in Ste.-Geneviève-des-Bois, a southern suburb of Paris. He died of his wounds on the way to a hospital.

Twenty-six other defendants were charged with crimes including entrapment, sequestration resulting in death and failing to assist a person in danger.

The case was surrounded by a miasma of accusations about the nature of French society and its young Muslim immigrants. Many saw the case as proof of deep anti-Semitism in France, which has Europe’s largest Muslim and Jewish populations. Mr. Fofana was quoted in news accounts in 2006 as saying that he wanted to kidnap a Jew because “they’re loaded with dough.”