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February 24, 2006

France: Leader of Muslim Kidnap Gang Arrested In Africa

We reported earlier on the horrific kidnapping and murder of a young Jewish man, who was found naked, tied to a tree, with cuts and burns across 80% of his body, in the suburb of Essonne, south of Paris.

Ilan Halimi had been caught in a honey-trap set by a vicious Muslim gang, who used a young attractive woman to seduce Ilan before he was abducted and held for ransom.

Yesterday, the UK Times reported on the claims made by Jewish leaders that the true anti-semitic and Islamist agenda of the kidnap gang had been deliberately suppressed by the police, to avoid inflaming passions among the volatile Muslim communities of the suburbs, who showed their commitment to French life last November by sustained riots, arson attacks and assaults on synagogues and individuals.

Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin announced that all efforts would be made to bring justice to Ilan's family But Radio Shalom, a Jewish station, said that Ilan was "made to pay for the (Danish) cartoons of Muhammad and Abu Ghraib."

Initially police denied the racial aspects of the case, but on Monday six men and a woman in custody had charges of racial hatred added to their existing indictments.

Ilan Halimi's case was not the first committed by the gang. A 50-year old Jewish male said that he too had been lured to an estate where he had been knocked out with a pistol butt, but had been rescued after residents called the emergency services. He spent a week hospitalised after the event.

Ruth Halimi, Ilan's mother said: "We told the police that there had been at least three other attempted abductions of young Jews, but they persisted in considering the motives purely criminal because they are afraid of reviving a clash with the Muslims."

We reported that the apparent leader of the gang, Youssef Fofana, who called himself (in English) "Brain Of The Barbarians" had fled before he could be arrested.

Today's Telegraph reports that he has now been arrested in Abidjan, Cote d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast), in West Africa. He is now going to be extradicted to France.

There are more details in today's edition of Le Figaro. Fofana has been in the country for nine days while his co-kidnappers were being arrested in Bagneaux, their locus operandi.

During an overnight interrogation starting on Wednesday evening, he admitted that he had taken part in the kidnapping of a Jewish man for money, but denied that the reasons had any "anti-semitic" dimension.

It is thought that Fofana, by fleeing to his native land, and swapping continents, had naively thought he could escape punishment. He spent his first night in Abidjan in the bed of of a prostitute in a hotel in a suburb of the city of Abidjan.

Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at February 24, 2006 9:02 AM

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