Murder of Ilan Halimi

A tree commemorating Ilan Halimi was cut down in Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois shortly before the anniversary of his death in 2019.

In 2017 The Washington Post revisited Ilan Halimi's murder, describing it as similar to the murder of Sarah Halimi, because French authorities similarly refused to acknowledge the antisemitic nature of the murder or to investigate it as ethnically and ideologically motivated terrorism.

A garden in the Jerusalem Forest was named after him. In May 2011, a garden in the 12th arrondissement of Paris where Halimi used to play as a child was renamed after him.

Ruth Halimi, Ilan's mother, subsequently co-authored a book with Émilie Frèche titled 24 jours: la vérité sur la mort d'Ilan Halimi (24 days: the truth about the death of Ilan Halimi), released April 2009. In the book, Ruth claimed that French police never suspected her son's kidnappers would kill the 23-year-old after three weeks in captivity in 2006, partly because they would not face the antisemitic character of the crime (as reported in the French newspaper Le Figaro). Émilie Frèche stated that "by denying the anti-semitic character, ... [the police] did not figure out the profile of the gang." The book details how Ilan's parents were told to stay silent during the ordeal and were ordered not to seek aid in order to pay the ransom, nor show their son's photo to people who might have come forward with information about his whereabouts.

In an interview with Elle Magazine on March 27, 2009, Ruth Halimi stated that "The police were completely off the mark. They thought they were dealing with classic bandits, but these people were beyond the norm." Halimi stated that she wrote the book to "alert public opinion to the danger of anti-semitism which has returned in other forms, so that a story like this can never happen again".

The crime was committed by a group of persons belonging to a gang calling themselves les barbares, 'The Barbarians'. Many of them had criminal records and had been imprisoned. A total of 27 people were accused of involvement in the crime and were tried for kidnapping and murder in 2009. One person was acquitted and the rest were convicted. Gang leader Youssouf Fofana was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum of 22 years before the possibility of parole. The woman who had lured Halimi to his abduction was sentenced to nine years imprisonment. Two of his close associates, Jean-Christophe Soumbou and Samir Ait Abdel Malek, received 18 and 15-year prison terms respectively, and Malek's prison term was later increased to 18 years upon appeal. Six others convicted over their involvement received sentences ranging from 12 to 15 years imprisonment, and seven others received sentences ranging from 8 months to 11 years imprisonment. While Fofana chose not to appeal his sentence, 14 of the 27 verdicts were appealed by the prosecution. The convictions were upheld on appeal in December 2010. In 2017, a Paris court sentenced Fofana to an additional 10 years imprisonment for other extortions he had committed.

The trial, which started on 29 April 2009, was conducted behind closed doors because two of the suspects were minors.

On the evening of Friday, 10 July 2009, the verdict was given. Ilan Halimi's mother and others were absent from the court, as the Sabbath had already started.

The retrial was officially announced Monday 10 July 2009. It started on 25 October 2010, and ended on 17 December 2010, with all convictions upheld and some sentences extended.

On 22 February 2008, six members of a group calling themselves Barbarians assaulted 19-year-old Mathieu Roumi in the same Paris suburb of Bagneux where Halimi was kidnapped. For two hours the attackers tortured the young man. One shoved cigarette butts into his mouth, another took issue with Roumi's Jewish origin (paternal), grabbed correction fluid and scrawled sale juif ("dirty Jew") and sale PD ("dirty faggot") on his forehead. When the issue of his sexual orientation arose, one of them placed a condom on the tip of a stick and shoved it in Roumi's mouth. The six men proceeded to scream at him and threaten that he would die the way Halimi did. The men were all arrested.

Ilan Halimi was initially buried in the Cimetière parisien de Pantin near Paris, and the funeral drew a large Jewish crowd. At the request of the family, his remains were reburied in Har HaMenuchot cemetery in Jerusalem, Israel on 9 February 2007. It was timed to allow his first Yartzeit, on Tu Bishvat, to pass before the reburial. The date and time (11:30 am) also marked "exactly one year after his burial in France according to the Jewish Calendar."

The murder of Ilan Halimi (Hebrew: אילן חלימי) was the kidnapping, torture, and murder of a young Frenchman of Moroccan Jewish ancestry in France in 2006. Halimi was kidnapped on 21 January 2006 by a group calling itself the Gang of Barbarians. The kidnappers, believing that all Jews are rich, repeatedly contacted the victim's modestly placed family demanding very large sums of money. Halimi was held captive and tortured for three weeks, and died of his injuries. The case drew national and international attention as an example of antisemitism in France.

On 20 January 2006, one of the perpetrators, Sorour Arbabzadeh (known as Yalda or Emma), a 17-year-old woman of French-Iranian origin, went to the phone store in Paris where Halimi worked and struck up a conversation with him. She eventually asked for Halimi's number, which he gave to her, and left the store. The woman called him the next evening and told him to come to her apartment for a drink. He was lured to an apartment block in the Parisian banlieues where he was ambushed and held captive by the group upon arrival. No one saw or heard from Halimi until the next afternoon, when his sister received an email containing a picture that showed Halimi gagged and tied up to a chair with a gun to his head. In text, the abductors threatened his life and demanded 450,000 euros from his family, stating that they would kill him if they went to the police. Not having the money, though, Halimi's family had no other option than to contact the police.

After three weeks and no success in finding the captors, the family and the police stopped receiving messages from the captors. Halimi, severely tortured, more than 80% burned and unclothed, was dumped next to a road at Sainte-Geneviève-Des-Bois on 13 February 2006. He was found by a passer-by who immediately called for an ambulance. Halimi died from his injuries on his way to the hospital.

A woman, referred to as Audrey L., surrendered after the police had released a facial composite picture. She pointed to the Barbarians, a gang of (North) African immigrants who had perpetrated similar abductions in the past. In the subsequent days, French police arrested 15 people in connection with the crime. The leader of the gang, Youssouf Fofana (born 1980), who had been born in Paris to parents from Côte d'Ivoire, fled to his parents' homeland together with the woman used as bait. They were arrested on February 23 in Abidjan and extradited to France on March 4, 2006.