FRANCE: Two members of the Paris crime brigade left for Ivory Coast yesterday in search of France's most wanted man, writes Lara Marlowe in Paris
Ivorian authorities confirmed that Youssouf Fofana (26) arrived there on February 15th, two days after police found the body of a dying young man dumped beside railway tracks south of Paris.
Fofana is the leader of the gang believed responsible for kidnapping and torturing to death Ilan Halimi (23).
The gang, called "the Barbarians", is from the suburb of Bagneux, west of Paris. Three more people were arrested yesterday in Belgium, bringing to 10 the number imprisoned in connection with Mr Halimi's murder.
Mr Halimi was found at Sainte-
Geneviève-des-Bois on February 13th, three weeks after he was kidnapped. His body was covered with cuts and burns, and he died on the way to hospital.
Fofana is the third of six children of an Ivorian couple who arrived in Bagneux in the 1990s. From 1998 until 2001 he was jailed at Fleury-Mérogis for armed robbery. He is also known as Mohamed.
Mr Halimi's Jewish family emigrated to France from Morocco. Yet it took a week after his death for French officials to admit that the atrocity might have something to do with anti-Semitism.
The theory was already widespread in the French Jewish community by the time investigating magistrates on Monday night added to the charge sheet "the victim's belonging to an ethnic group, nation, race or religion" as an aggravating factor.
At the annual dinner of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France on Monday night, prime minister Dominique de Villepin confirmed that anti-Semitism was being investigated as a motive.
Earlier, justice minister Pascal Clément told journalists that one of the detainees "said they went after Ilan Halimi because he was Jewish and because Jews are rich".
The "Barbarians" had attempted to kidnap six other men since December, four of them Jewish. Audrey L, the blond girlfriend of one of the gang members who turned herself in to police after her identikit image was published, said she was told to lure Jewish men "because they have money". The young north African woman who made a date with Halimi on January 20th has not been found.
Bernard Abouaf, director of the Jewish radio station Shalom, told Libération newspaper: "Ninety-five per cent of the people I talk to think that, when the kidnappers found out Ilan was Jewish, they really went at it. As the prosecutor says, they used gratuitous, spontaneous violence. They made him pay for the caricatures of Muhammad and Abu Ghraib."
Some 1,500 people marched in memory of Mr Halimi on Sunday, many wearing armbands with the Star of David and the words "Proud to be Jewish". The slogan of "Justice for Ilan" was transformed to "Vengeance for Ilan" by the end of the march.
Riot police intervened to stop vigilantes who beat up an African and attacked an Arab grocers. Another march has been scheduled by anti-racism and Jewish groups for February 26th.
Mr Halimi was held prisoner for several days in an apartment in a housing estate in Bagneux, then moved to the basement for the last two weeks of his life. He was held naked, blindfolded and gagged with duct tape. His tormentors took three photographs of him which investigators compared to images from Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
In an interview with the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Halimi's mother, Ruth, criticised French police for ignoring anti-Semitic motives, allegedly because they didn't want to anger Muslims following last November's riots.
"If Ilan hadn't been Jewish, he wouldn't have been killed," she said. "We told them that at least three Jews had escaped kidnapping, but they were only interested in financial motives."
Under questioning, one of the young gang members said he saw another extinguish a cigarette on Halimi's forehead with the words, "I don't like Jews".
When Halimi was kidnapped, the gang initially demanded €450,000 in ransom. Convinced that the Jewish community would pay, the kidnappers contacted the rabbi of a synagogue in Paris's 8th district - which Halimi never went to - and asked him to act as an intermediary.