Posted on 02/28/2006 2:35:05 AM PST by beaversmom
Tens of thousands of demonstrators marched through Paris on Sunday to protest anti-Semitism and racism after the torture and killing of a young Jewish man.
Organizers had asked for a silent vigil, but some protesters chanted "Justice for Ilan" or carried banners with slogans such as "No to a racist France" or "Ilan tortured, France wounded." Marchers in Paris on Feb. 26, 2006, protest the killing of Ilan Halimi. The yellow signs say: "Don't touch my friend". (AP Photo/Francois Mori)
Ilan Halimi, a 23-year-old cellphone salesman, was abducted on Jan. 21 by members of a gang who held him hostage in a Paris suburb for three weeks while demanding ransoms from his family.
He died en route to hospital on Feb. 13 after he was found lying beside some train tracks, naked, handcuffed and covered with burn marks.
Halimi's slaying was requalified as a hate crime after investigators found out the gang members targeted him because he was Jewish and they believed the anti-Semitic stereotype that all Jews are rich.
French officials allege the gang has been operating an extortion ring for several years, often targeting Jews. They accuse gang members of trying to abduct six other people since December, four of them Jewish.
The anti-Semitic overtones stunned France's Jewish community of 500,000, many of whom joined the march in Paris or smaller marches in Strasbourg, Lyon, Marseille and Bordeaux on Sunday.
Police estimated that about 33,000 people marched in Paris, while organizers said the crowd included as many as 200,000.
It included politicians of all stripes including several cabinet ministers and former prime minister Lionel Jospin as well as prominent Jewish and Catholic religious leaders.
"Today, we must march, we must stand up, to say that in France each of us has the right to live in dignity whatever his God, his religion, the colour of his skin," Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy told demonstrators.
One of the Jewish protesters, Olivier Barbe, carried a handmade placard reading "If only I were rich!"
"Ilan's murder was based on anti-Semitic prejudice," Barbe told CBC News in French.
"Because he was Jewish, his captors assumed he was rich. And that wasn't the case at all. It's completely wrong. You can be Jewish and on welfare. That's my case."
Fourteen people have been placed under judicial investigation in relation with Halimi's slaying.
The man accused of being the gang's ringleader fled to Ivory Coast about a week before the march. He was caught and is awaiting extradition to France.
What a Moosegang did stuned their beebers?
It's a muslim gang... inspired by Islam of course... what else will anyway!
But they're not going to leak the secret by, say, divulging a name or two of the culprits.
mozzies. Maghrebin. Nord Africain
Exactly. What else can you expect from muslims. they protect their fellows whether with good or bad acts..
mussulman musclemen
Thanks for all the links--love Mark Steyn.
more than likely not Born again Christians either. Amen.
The authorities did everything they could to sweep this murder under the rug. Now they're trumpeting that they decided it was a hate crime when they found out the victim was Jewish and the killers thought he was rich. What a laugh. The other Jewish victims killed in the past few years were what? Poor? So that wasn't anti-Semitism, terror, torture, etc.? France arrives a little late to the party.
Thanks for posting. What I remember is they castrated this young man and gouged out his eyes. Evil is running rampant in France.
Two years ago, a 23-year-old Paris disc jockey called Sebastien Selam was heading off to work from his parents' apartment when he was jumped in the parking garage by his Muslim neighbor Adel. Selam's throat was slit twice, to the point of near-decapitation; his face was ripped off with a fork; and his eyes were gouged out. Adel climbed the stairs of the apartment house dripping blood and yelling, "I have killed my Jew. I will go to heaven."
Yeah, they are making a big deal over the "rich" angle. Somehow, I don't think that is the total picture.
If memory serves me right, it was only a few days ago that french leaders were saying this horrific kidnapping,torture and murder of a Jewish young man by Muslim thugs was a terrible crime, but was not really anti-semitic.
Mark Steyn is right,this is the canary in the coalmine. Once again the French are deaf dumb and blind to the anti-semitism and violence against Jews right in their very midst.
1936 all over again.
Halimi sounds like an arab name...
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