 |
 |
|
From Halimi to Halimi: 11 years of ordeal! |
||
 [perfectpullquote align=”right” cite=” Eric Fottorino ” link=”” color=”#b22222″ class=”” size=”16″]““Every pain is a memory.” » [/perfectpullquote] |
||
The affair had shaken France: on February 13, 2006, Ilan Halimi was found dying in the Parisian suburbs, tortured to death by the “gang of barbarians”. On the occasion of the tenth anniversary of his disappearance, a year ago, France 3 had broadcast "The assassination of Ilan Halimi", a documentary without pathos or dogmatism, which highlighted the errors of assessment of the investigators responsible for of the case. With the appeasement and rigor that only time makes possible, director Ben Izaak returned at length to the defeat of the elite police forces by the gang of barbarians, led by Youssouf Fofana, a 25-year-old man. stubborn anti-Semitic prejudices. !
The documentary opens with Chopin's cult Nocturnes No. 9, a dark, slow-paced symphony, like the film that follows. To accurately describe this drama that has become a symbol of anti-Semitic violence, Ben Izaak takes his time, dividing his documentary into chapters based on the testimonies of the various actors in the case (the prosecutor Philippe Bilger, the elected socialist Julien Dray, the journalist Patricia Tourancheau , the mayor of Bagneux, the investigators of the BRI, the psychologist who led the negotiations with Fofana, or the sister of Ilan Halimi).
That of Me Francis Szpiner launches the film. And answers the underlying question posed by the documentary: “Was it an anti-Semitic crime?
The question raised was important because it highlighted a denial, that of the police and the justice system, which were slow to take into account the anti-Semitic track in the kidnapping of young Ilan Halimi, which occurred on the night of Saturday January 21, 2006 !
That evening, the 23-year-old dined at his mother's, like every Friday. He then honors his first appointment with Yalda, a young woman he met on Boulevard Voltaire, in the telephone shop where he works. After having a drink with her, he agrees to follow her to her studio in the southern suburbs of Paris. Arrived at his destination, Ilan Halimi was dragged from his car by individuals who beat him up, knocked him out and threw him in the trunk of a 4X4. “First we showered him, because we didn't want there to be any traces of DNA, then we shaved him, then we killed him. After killing him, we burned him. The process of Ilan Halimi's death can only refer to Jewish memory, which is that of the execution of Jews. The process of Halimi's death is an overwhelming process”, these are the words of Me Francis Szpiner!
On February 26, tens of thousands of people marched through the streets of Paris for the young man but also “to say no to racism and anti-Semitism”. Left and right elected officials are side by side in the procession.
But it was not until March 5, 2006 that the aggravating circumstance of anti-Semitism was accepted by the investigating judges. However, during the searches, the kidnappers found documents supporting the Charity and Relief Committee for the Palestinians, as well as Salafist propaganda material. And, on the telephone, a kidnapper had recited a surah from the Koran to the family of Ilan Halimi!
This case will have profoundly upset the Jewish community of France! It was an electric shock and led to a tremendous awareness on the part of this community on the level that anti-Semitism had reached in our country! This crime marked the death knell of an era: it was the first time, on French territory, that a Jew had been murdered because of his religion, since the end of the Second World War.
Certainly since 2002 and the second intifada, the Jewish community of France had seen the emergence of an anti-Semitism that it believed to be forever extinguished. The succession of anti-Semitic acts had created such emotion that, in a united demonstration, the Jewish community had managed to organize a gathering of nearly 200.000 people in Paris and, in the provinces, other gatherings had brought together tens of thousands of people !
With this crime, we thought we had reached the pinnacle of horror and that it would serve as an alert to put out the fire!
Unfortunately this was only the beginning of the descent into hell! On March 19, 2012, 3 children and a teacher were murdered by Mohamed Merah! there again, we had evoked a solitary act before noting that a terrorist organization, with fundamental anti-Semites, was settling on French territory!
Sarkozy's five-year term which began with the Ilan Halimi affair ended with the Mérah affair!
But, overall, these cases concerned only the Jews of France. We had to wait for the terrorist attack against Charlie Hebdo and the Hyper Kosher to understand that after the Jews, these criminals were attacking the French as a whole, Jews and non-Jews!
This also provoked very strange and more than surprising reactions from certain political figures who dared to express themselves thus: “until now we had compassion but today we are concerned”! Thus the murder and the assassination of Jewish French citizens with aggravating circumstance of acts of cruelty did not concern them but raised their only compassion!!!!
Then the cases abounded: rape of a woman at her home in Créteil, multiple physical attacks, stabbings, desecration of cemeteries,... These attacks became daily and were almost trivialized until the electroshock of April 4, 2017 and the assassination in abominable conditions of Madame Sarah Halimi Attal!
That night, an Orthodox Jewish woman, a doctor, was surprised in her sleep at home! She is horribly tortured for over an hour. She is 65 years old and she lives in a modest building in the XNUMXth arrondissement of Paris, rue Vaucouleurs. The “radical Islamist” murderer, who had pestered and harassed her with anti-Semitic insults for weeks, entered her home from the balcony and attacked his victim with incredible violence, causing around twenty broken bodies. and in the face, before throwing her out of the window, dying, from the third floor. The story of the violence and acts of barbarism suffered by the victim are simply unbearable to describe and the reflection of an indescribable hatred!
During this time, the police (immediately notified) are on the landing. The three armed men do not intervene. In fact, we will know later that it was 18 police officers who were on the spot and who did not intervene during the ordeal of the sexagenarian!
The neighbors (several dozen people) hear his screams. They don't flinch. The national media are alerted but they do not investigate and pass over the abominable assassination in silence, perhaps too concerned about the price of Mr. Fillon's costumes!
Thus, and in conditions just as abominable as her namesake Ilan, tortured and murdered 11 years earlier, a 65-year-old woman was tortured and murdered in the heart of Paris! Her name was Sarah…Sarah Halimi.
And yet, that was not enough to move just one of the presidential candidates with the notable exception of a single one… Mrs. Marine Le Pen who mentioned the tragedy facing Yves Thréard from Le Figaro! Yes, only one voice for this terrible drama!
No, this appalling scene did not take place in 1942, before or after the Veld'hiv Roundup, but... on the night of April 3 to 4, 2017 to the cries of "Allah Akbar", in a tiny HLM located a few not far from the Bataclan. But what interested politicians, the media and the so-called organized Jewish community was whether it was France or the French State that was guilty of the Vel d'Hiv Roundup that took place...nearly a century when we closed our eyes to the anti-Semitic abomination of the moment!
Sad France which is going to meditate on the dead of a century ago while closing its eyes to those of today!
Sad political personnel who will throw a wreath into the Seine for the suspicious and unfortunate death of Brahim Bouarram, forgetting the horrible massacre of Madame Sarah Halimi not far from the ceremony with great fanfare on the banks of the Seine!
Let us remember, already then, we were in the presidential campaign and even between the two towers, but then, France had risen as one man around the President of the Republic and the candidates, a demonstration of several tens of thousands of people smoothly organized by so-called anti-racist associations!
But it is true that then the presumed culprit of a probably racist crime was “blond with blue eyes” unlike the certainly guilty of the assassination of Madame Halimi, a crime certainly anti-Semitic and particularly abominable…..
Worse than all this terrible drama is taking place in the middle of Paris without anyone reporting the case. The media are silent: only in between in Le Parisien evokes the drama with vague remarks.
Worse still, on April 7, three days after the events, the so-called organized Jewish community prided itself on a press release in which it wrote “Nothing allows us to retain the anti-Semitic character and nothing allows us to exclude it. The investigation is continuing and all leads are open... However, we have full confidence in the men and women who are working on this investigation... The investigation cannot be done on social networks, the mixing of information from direct witnesses with stories “revisited” by commentators, the mixture of verified and proven information with supposed, imaginary, desired or even denied information creates confusion that serves the search for truth. »
After the various anti-Semitic acts passed over in silence since February, it was forbidden to mention the anti-Semitic track in the investigation obviously so as not to favor « a candidate » during the presidential campaign which was in full swing! Thus, in order to avoid a putative and virtual anti-Semitism, an anti-Semitism was camouflaged which was indeed real!
This is how this anti-Semitic crime was not mentioned during the presidential campaign.
As for the journalists, those who were seen to be much more zealous in the “Theo affair”, all stood to attention – a first! — in the face of calls for caution from the prosecutor. Just like the artists who were so promptly mobilized in the “Theo affair”!
Thus, apart from the Jewish press, only Le Parisien had spoken about it in a paragraph of a few lines and without mentioning the slightest trace of anti-Semite.
However, this appears totally incomprehensible in view of the police report which was disclosed to the press on Monday, May 22 following a press conference by family lawyers. Lawyers who were surprised by the "lead screed" that weighs on this case.
In fact, the investigation had confirmed what we already knew about the ordeal of the unfortunate. Worse. Her executioner massacred her while reciting suras from the Koran and calling her “Satan” in Arabic (the attack was recorded by a neighbour). After having completed it under the eyes of eighteen Bac police officers present in the building from 4 am, but who were waiting for reinforcements, the killer went back to the neighbors by the same balcony and went back to praying. Reinforcements have arrived. The arrest took place at 5:35 a.m. The man did not resist.
These facts are serious. But we are trying, once again, and despite the facts, to find a way to reassure ourselves on the cheap.
Thus, just like the massacrer of Nice or the driver of Dijon, the jihadist of Belleville would be “crazy”. And so, in this capacity, and because he was a little “elated”, the police did not think it necessary to incarcerate him…but therefore took him to a psychiatric hospital!
Sadly ironically, this is how eleven years later we find ourselves in completely similar circumstances facing a new Halimi case!
From one Halimi to another, from Ilan to Sarah, as once from Solène to Ilan, we are faced with the same collective drama that should lead us to scrutinize the collective unconscious that reigns in our country and its induced pathologies.
Two Jews tortured, tortured and sacrificed and whose death could certainly have been avoided with a little more compassion and responsiveness on the part of the police or politicians! Today, it is up to Justice to share out the responsibilities because there are responsibilities, perhaps at the highest level! It even looks like a state affair with multiple twists!
Indeed, in the face of such levity and such indifference, even such duplicity, it begins to make many cumulative errors.
So yes, it's unbearable and it's now everyone's business. It's unbearable for Jews, of course, but it's even more so for non-Jews because anti-Semitism is not the concern of Jews but of everyone!
So, let's recap: how did we not learn from the police mistakes during the long sequestration (nearly a month) of young Ilan Halimi, kidnapped, martyred and murdered because he was a Jew by the Gang of Barbarians in 2006? Why, then, had the Quai des Orfèvres stubbornly followed the trail, as absurd as it was culpable, of a settling of accounts between gangs. Let's not forget that the boss of the PJ at the time did not budge, including after the capture of youssouf fofana who was able to escape to the Ivory Coast (and whose capture was due to agents of the Mossad). And here we go again with the same wanderings! Bis repeat! Errare humanum is, sed perseverare diabolicum est (“To err is human, stubbornness [in error] is diabolical”)!
Definitely, we don't learn from our failures, or maybe we don't want to learn!
We must therefore swallow the state lie that there can be no anti-Semitism in France! And in any case not from Arab-Muslims living in France! And as Master William Goldnadel, lawyer for the Halimi family, points out, “ the murderer would have been blond with blue eyes, all of France would have taken to the streets. He is an Islamist, all of France is tearing down the walls”.
Finally, as Alexandra Laignel-Lavastine brilliantly puts it: “As long as our homegrown barbarians killed only Jews — Ilan Halimi in 2006, the children of Toulouse in 2012, a couple at the Jewish Museum in Brussels in May 2014, people shopping at Porte de Vincennes in January 2015, the replica of Copenhagen just after and already forgotten, it was not very serious. All the same, they must have been a little "guilty" since it's been said for two thousand years. In the lot, there were certainly a few “Arab” soldiers and other “Islamophobic” journalists who had perhaps looked for him a little. We weren't going to make a story out of it. But at the Bataclan, “innocent French people”, to use Raymond Barre's slip after the anti-Semitic attack on rue Copernic in 1980, was unacceptable! This refrain, without those who sing it necessarily thinking of evil, we were entitled to it in all tones the day after November 13: “But why us? Why France? Why innocent people? ».
For all these reasons, and despite the incomprehensible reluctance of the so-called Jewish community « kitchen », we have no intention of shutting up or ignoring the Truth that we are owed!
Yes, Ms Sarah Halimi Attal, was tortured and cowardly murdered because she was Jewish!
Yes, the family has still not been able to obtain all the clarifications they are asking for on the circumstances surrounding this death.
Yes, it is important to know why the police forces, on the spot, did not intervene!
Yes, the 27-year-old killer presents "a profile of a radical Islamist" and all the elements of the investigation suggest an anti-Semitic crime!
Yes, anti-Semitism there is and yet the prosecutor refuses to qualify it as such… for the moment! As was the case in the case… Ilan Halimi!
Following the judicial investigation, opened on April 14 by the Paris prosecutor's office for "intentional homicide", the family filed a civil action.
Consequently, in view of the elements available to us to date and in accordance with the wishes of the family, we are demanding, as of today, the reclassification of this crime as murder with the aggravating circumstances that constitute acts of barbarism and the anti-Semitic motive.
We also ask that all light be shed on the reasons why the Police did not intervene when there were many on the spot, an act likely to be interpreted as non-assistance to anyone in danger!
For our part, we will be a civil party as soon as we have standing, that is to say as soon as the anti-Semitic nature of this crime is recognized.
In order to carry out this fight, the Confederation of French Jews and Friends of Israel decided to create a support committee for the emergence of Truth and Justice in this case so that the silence does not amplify the horror of this crime.
You will be notified in a future press release of the operating procedures of this committee, which will be chaired by Mr. Guy ATTAL.
But from now on we ask you to mobilize, to mobilize around you, your friends, the political, media or artistic personalities that you may know so that we can act as quickly as possible and show our determination!
Let's act, quickly, well, concretely and with determination for the memory of Sarah Halimi Attal, z”l, and for the respect due to our community!
We will no longer be satisfied with words, we want actions! And the first act we demand is recognition of the anti-Semitic nature of this crime!
Richard C. ABITBOL
Chairman
PRESS RELEASE
