Among those to be re-tried are the two accomplices considered to have been most active in the kidnapping and subsequent holding of Ilan, who had been sentenced in first instance to 15 and 18 years, where the prosecution had asked for 20 years of imprisonment for each, as well as the young woman who had served as bait to draw the young Jew into the trap, who had been sentenced to 9 years compared with the 10 to 12 years requested by prosecution.
Several hundred people gathered on 13 July in front of the Ministry of Justice in Paris, to pay tribute to Ilan Halimi, following a call from Jewish organisations, including CRIF.
After reading a message from Ilan's mother, the demonstrators sang the Marseillaise (France's national anthem) followed by a minute of silence. Later, a delegation consisting in particular of Richard Prasquier, President of CRIF, and Joel Mergui, President of the Central Consistory, was received by two advisers to the Minister of Justice. CRIF expressed its satisfaction following the announcement by the Minister, Michèle Alliot-Marie, that she had asked the Public Prosecutor's office to appeal against the sentences which had been lower than requested by the prosecuting attorney in the trial of the murderers of the young Jew Ilan Halimi. CRIF had pointed out that the prosecuting attorney's summing up against some of the accused had seemed too lenient in view of the seriousness of their role in this tragedy. Moreover, CRIF had noted that the verdict - for several of the accused - had been below the requested sentences.
CRIF is concerned, as is most of France's Jewish community. CRIF hopes that legislation will allow this new trial to be public, because the excuse of being underage was clearly not appropriate.
Since the sentencing of the Barbarians, as the gang was known, a number of voices have been raised within the Jewish community denouncing the verdict. While the maximum sentence inflicted on Youssouf Fofana has been greeted with satisfaction, those of his co-accused are considered too "lenient" by Richard Prasquier, the President of CRIF.
In an interview for "Le Figaro", one of France's leading dailies, Richard Prasquier said: "After a prosecution summing up that had already been considered too lenient, the sentences were in general even lower. (...) I am disturbed by the attitude of prosecution attorney Philippe Bilger. According to several sources, he has claimed that there is an anti-Semitism that is acceptable and another that isn't. There are other elements which tend to show that he played down the role of anti-Semitism in the gang's motivations. Were this to be confirmed, I believe it would disqualify him from his position as prosecuting attorney."
"A new trial will be useful only if it takes place in public, so that opinion may understand the way this gang operated, grasp its violence and its anti-Semitic prejudices The Halimi family, the Jewish community and all citizens have been deprived of what could have been a lesson. From its in camera proceedings right up to the verdict, this trial was turned in on itself, and has had no educational virtue.
"Each one of the 26 accused could at any moment have stopped this torture with an anonymous phone call. The fact is that silence prevailed. It is tempting to dodge the anti-Semite factor to turn Ilan's murder into just one more murder for money. With the exception of Fofana, the protagonists have all claimed not to be anti-Semites and indeed it is probable that some of them do not even know the meaning of the term. But they have absorbed ferocious stereotypes against Jews who are necessarily "rich", which comes to the same thing. The fact is that anti-Semitism has often been the sum of these prejudices. Those who instigated the pogroms in the Russian empire had never read anti-Semitic literature. Most of those guilty of the Holocaust were ordinary people, indifferent to Jews. France is not an anti-Semitic country. This is precisely what sometimes makes it blind to this evil that is once more eating away at it."
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