French Jewish victim of brutal antisemitic gang remembered on 15th anniversary of kidnap

Today marks the 15th anniversary of the kidnapping, torture and murder of Ilan Halimi, a 23-year-old French Jew.

Social media posts remembered Mr Halimi who, on 20th January 2006, was kidnapped by an antisemitic gang and then tortured in what Washington Post columnist James McAuley described as “one of the most brutal antisemitic attacks in France in recent memory (and there have been quite a few).”

Mr Halimi, who lived in the Paris suburb of Bagneux with his mother and sister, spent three weeks in captivity as gang members tortured him and tried to extort ransom money from his relatives. He died on the way to the hospital after being dumped near a railway track on the outskirts of the French capital.

Part of the eulogy written for Mr Halimi by Judea Pearl, father of murdered American journalist Daniel Pearl, was also shared on Twitter: “Let there be no silence on your grave, Ilan; no rest, nor learned discussion… until another Zola rises with a louder ‘J’accuse’.”

Francis Kalifat, president of CRIF, the organisation representing French Jews, wrote on Twitter, “I think of his family and all the victims of antisemitism. Neither forgiveness nor forgetting.”

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