In memory of Ilan Halimi Z''L - 10 years

[Chiram]

Ten years ago a young man named Ilan Halimi went on a date, he would never come home.

For days a Paris suburb gang self-named 'The Gang of Barbarians' cruised city streets to scope out businesses closed on Saturday.
Once they located targets, they sent attractive girls to seduce men there and ask for their phone numbers.
The girls were bait, one succeeded in getting Ilan's number after flirting with the young cell phone salesman.

She called him for a date and after asked him to escort her back to her suburb of Bagneux.
Once there, several hoods jumped him and locked Ilan, duck tapped in a project apartment, the nightmare begins.

Soon after, they contact Ilan's parents with a ransom request of 4 million Euros, these two are not wealthy, separated and contact the police.
The police secretly advise the parents to refuse to pay and try to buy time so they can catch the kidnappers.
For days, weeks, this goes on, while Ilan is tortured and starved by a dozen hood rats in the project apartment and later in a basement.

While Ilan's hands, feet and face are duck tapped, several Jew-haters take pleasure in putting out cigarettes on him and cutting his skin with a box cutter, while their boss, Youssouf Fofana YS tries to get the ransom from his hide out in the Ivory Coast. He even contacts a Rabbi, claiming that the ‘Jewish community can easily come up with the money’.

After 3 weeks of waiting, Fofana YS decides its taking too long and takes a gagged, tortured and famished Ilan to rural train tracks, pours gasoline on him, lights him on fire and goes to the airport to board a plane for Ivory Coast.

Ilan manages to crawl to a fence near a train station where a woman finds him and calls an ambulance.

It was too late, Ilan Halimi died that day.

10 years since this atrocity occurred, while Fofana YS is behind bars after getting deported from Ivory Coast, most of his assistants are now free.
The French government said they were just gangsters and what they did had nothing to do with Ilan being Jewish.

It is important to remember that the whole Bagneux project knew a Jew was being held hostage, yet no one spoke out.

The Halimi family had Ilan's body buried in Jerusalem, so none of the killers could ever spit on his grave.

A gathering in Ilan's memory will take place THURSDAY FEBRUARY 11th at the Ilan Halimi park in the 12th district of Paris.