In a Jihad Watch exclusive, Nidra Poller provides an update on the Ilan Halimi murder case:
Youssouf Fofana has been extradited from the Ivory Coast. His return to France was the opening subject on prime time news. We saw him led to the plane in Abidjan under heavy escort, taken from the plane in Paris under even heavier escort, brought from the airport to Paris in a convey with motorcycle cops and screaming sirens, and delivered to the main courthouse on a cold blustery night. He appeared before the judge, heard charges, more-or-less explained himself and was tightly locked up in a French prison.
I don’t agree with Hannah Arendt’s concept of the banality of evil. It’s more like the deflation of evil under pressure of the law. Taking the life of a human being is immense, it’s limitless, it’s the size of divinity and the depth of iniquity. When Fofana was the Barbarian’s Brain, pushing people around, packing a rod, inflicting torture, dehumanizing Ilan Halimi, slitting the throat of all that was left of him after three and a half weeks of torture, he was a big operator. Now he’s a punk. He’s helpless, useless, worthless. But we want justice. We want him to account for his evil deeds and be punished to the fullest extent of the law.
Ilan Halimi was lured into the death trap on the 20th of January. He died shortly after he was discovered on the 13th of February in a condition that we wish we could not imagine. The extent and the brutality of the tortures inflicted on him have not been described and will never be fully revealed. One haunting detail torments the mind: not content to blindfold their victim, the Gang of Barbarians covered his eyes with tape, in fact his whole face was wrapped in tape”¦from the very beginning”¦from the first days when, in the words of the arch coward Fofana, the kidnapping was undertaken for the purpose of financial gains.
Though there were some attempts by mainstream media to let the story fade out, it kept coming back to assume its rightful place. We are getting an exceptional quantity of investigative reporting. And English-speaking media are slowly awaking to the importance of this case for all it reveals and all that remains hidden in French society.
Twenty-one people have already been arrested, nineteen are behind bars, several big goons are still on the run. Police think that an even wider circle of people knew about the hostage and the torture, and kept silent. Some may be charged with “non-assistance to an endangered person.”
Youssouf Fofana will be charged with other extortion attempts, going back to 2002, targeting prominent personalities and general practitioners, many of them Jewish. Which raises metaphysical questions about antisemitism. Though one or two of the barbarians accuse fellow gang members of antisemitism, none of them admit to it for themselves, least of all Fofana. He lost miserably on his first line of defense, opposing extradition on that grounds that he was Ivoirian because his parents were born in the Ivory Coast. The court ruled that he is French, and got him out of there as fast as the Airbus could carry him. Now Fofana is camping on a new bargain: he admits he masterminded the abduction but denies he killed the hostage; he admits he specifically chose a Jew, but denies that he was motivated by antisemitism. His choice of a Jew was pragmatic. As he repeatedly explained to the victim’s family and even to his rabbi, if the family doesn’t have money, they can get it at the synagogue.
Some analysts put two and two together, and come up with a clear case of antisemitism. Others subtract two from two and the antisemitism disappears. The guys in the “˜hood, as we will see below, put two and two and two and another two together, and when it adds up to deep seated widespread dangerous antisemitism, they rub out the figures and get aggressively defensive.
You get the impression that for many people antisemitism is not an attitude, a mindset, an emotion, an explosive combination of ideas and passions, it’s a concrete object, a thing at least twice as big as an SUV, and when someone has it you can see it with your own two eyes, and if you don’t see it parked there in front of his nose, he doesn’t have it.
The newspaper of record, Le Monde, had tried to shy away from the murder case but finally decided to swim with the current. Suddenly we get a flood of information, including names of some of the gang members and details about their roles in the hostage operation. To wit: Giri N”Gazi, 19, jailer. Christophe Martin Vallet, 22, works in a school canteen, chauffeured one of the baiting chicks and gave Fofana advanced IT training. Samir Aït Abdelmalek, 27, liaison between jailers and kidnappers, got the keys to the apartment where Ilan was held before being transferred to the boiler room. Gilles Serrurier (“serrurier” is French for locksmith), building custodian, gave the keys to Samir. Jerome Ribeiro, 30, quit the gang at the end of January because things were getting too violent. Jean-Christophe G., 17, one of the most violent torturers. Yahia Touré Kaba, 19, acted as guard for 2 ½ weeks. Another jailer, pizza delivery boy Nabil Moustafa, 18, brought in Cédric Birot Saint-Yves, 28, to help. Fabrice Polygone, 19, vocational school student, jailer for the whole 3 ½ weeks (played hooky?).
This thug admits to a slash, another to a cigarette burn, a third to shaving Ilan’s head, but nothing that measures up to the wounds found on his wretched, wrecked body. Le Monde apparently obtained this information from lawyers involved in the case. Their identities are not officially announced, their faces re not shown. Innocent until proven guilty, until their trial two or three years from now. According to French law they cannot be sentenced en masse for what they did all together. Each individual criminal act must be attributed to its rightful author.
But they”ve already been doused with a splash of victimhood: their families are stigmatized, terrorized, forced to move away or living behind closed shutters, harassed and targeted with “disguised threats.” Norbert Goutmann, who has been defending Fofana since 1999 gave up. Too much pressure”¦from Jews, one must assume, who don’t understand how a Jewish lawyer can defend a vicious Jew killer.
Maître Goutmann tried to explain, on a Jewish radio station and on national television, that he was only doing his job, that Madame Fofana was terrorized, that it remained to be seen if the accusations made against his client are founded. As it turns out several members of the Barbarians” gang have Jewish lawyers. Doesn’t that prove they are not antisemitic?
Ever since the November riots, “positive discrimination” has been in the air. So it is no surprise to find Moustapha Kessous reporting from the “˜hood for Le Monde: “Bagneux: “You don’t dare say the word “˜Jew.– What with the pressure exerted on the lawyers, the families of the Barbarian gang, and their nice neighbors, you understand that the Jews are making it tough for everyone.
Djibril Issaka lives a few doors away from Youssouf Fofana, and works for a cultural association a few steps from where Ilan Halimi was tortured. Djibril and the brothas, who have to put up with stupid stereotypes about Blacks, are insulted by insinuations of wholesale antisemitism in the projects. He actually joined the March in memory of Ilan, but stepped out after 6 minutes when he heard people saying Ilan Halimi was killed because he was Jewish. Too much.
Abou Decore, 24, monitor in a social club, complains that you can’t even pronounce the word “Jew” without being accused of antisemitism. It’s okay to say Muslims are terrorists but you can’t say Jews have money.
A 19 year-old neighbor chimes in: “Jews are always playing victim”¦. This affair is going to create antisemitism.”
Daoud Ouatara, 23, says the French have a moral debt because they sold out the Jews during the war, but it’s nothing to do with us, we”re sons of immigrants, we”re racaille.
And another brotha adds that the Jews stick together. The least little thing and they”ve got the CRIF, the Licra, they don’t let you get away with anything.
When Bernard Abouaf of Radio Shalom checked out the “˜hood he didn’t get a warm welcome like Moustapha Kessous. One teenager unashamedly admitted that he didn’t know they were torturing a guy, but if he did, he wouldn’t have squealed on the gang, “because they live around here.”
Four Jewish men were attacked in separate incidents in the Sarcelles banlieue this weekend. Nicolas Sarkozy received the victims and their families in his gilded offices. But one local official declared that four individuals were attacked by delinquents; we have not established that this was a case of inter-communitarian violence. Unless you see the double SUV it’s best to be cautious, n”est-ce pas?