FRANCE: The suspected killer and gang leader known as "the brain of the Barbarians" was arrested by Ivorian police at a roadblock in Abidjan late on Wednesday night.
French prime minister Dominique de Villepin's office said President Laurent Gbagbo had promised that Youssouf Fofana (26), France's most wanted man, would be repatriated "in the coming hours". Two members of the French anti-crime brigade attended Fofana's interrogation, during which he confessed to participating in the abduction and torture of Ilan Halimi (23), a mobile telephone salesman, but denied that anti-Semitism was a motive.
Both Mr de Villepin and interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy praised the "fine co-operation" between French and Ivorian authorities. The speed with which Fofana was apprehended was impressive, considering the strained relations between Paris and Abidjan. The fact that Fofana's family is from the northern Muslim rebel-held zone may have encouraged the Ivorian government to co-operate.
Fofana was previously arrested 13 times in France for armed robbery, breaking and entering and assault. Police describe him as a hardened criminal.
With friends from Bagneux, southwest of Paris, he established a gang called "the Barbarians" which used attractive young women as bait to kidnap men. The gang targeted Jews in the belief that they "have money".
The gang kidnapped Ilan Halimi on January 21st, then held him hostage for three weeks, during which he was tortured with knives and fire. He died shortly after he was dumped, naked and handcuffed, near a train station south of Paris on February 13th.
Fofana's arrest brings to 17 the number of people detained in connection with the atrocity. They include Gilles S (39), the concierge of the building at rue Prokofiev in Bagneux where Halimi was imprisoned. The youths promised the concierge €1,500 for allowing them to use a vacant apartment, then the basement furnace room, to hold their hostage.
Halimi's murder has elicited shock and outrage and sparked a debate about what constitutes an anti-Semitic act. President Jacques Chirac promised Halimi's parents that "the truth will be known". He and Mr de Villepin were to attend a ceremony in Halimi's memory at the Grand Synagogue in Paris last night. Mr Sarkozy will participate in a march called by anti-racist groups on Sunday, along with representatives of France's main political parties.
Ceremonies are also being held in Lyon, Grenoble, Montpellier, Nice and Marseille.
A young man called Fred, who attended a Jewish school with Halimi and worked across the street from him, saw the young North African woman who gave Halimi her mobile number. "She had a good figure, dark, curly hair, not pretty, vulgar," he told Le Figaro. She was arrested in Marseille this week.
Fred saw the first photograph of Halimi transmitted by the gang. "You could hardly recognise Ilan," he said. "He was wrapped in tape, like a mummy. Only his nose showed, so he could breathe. It was broken and bleeding." The doomed hostage held a newspaper,and someone held a pistol to his temple.
Halimi's father negotiated with the kidnappers. The ransom payment, which was to have taken place in front of the Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant in the boulevard Sebastopol - an African area - was aborted by the kidnappers, who then demanded the money be dropped in Belgium. The family asked for proof that Ilan was alive. They have since blamed police for advising them to cut off contact with the kidnappers.
The death of Raphaël Clin, a gendarme in the Franco-Dutch West Indian island of Saint-Martin, has further fuelled French fears of anti-white racism. Clin was run down by a motorcyclist when he tried to stop young men from racing. Instead of calling for help, onlookers screamed "Die!" and "We got a white man, a gendarme."