A court in Creteil, near Paris, began on Monday the appeal trial of 17 people convicted in the 2006 kidnapping, torture and murder of Ilan Halimi, a 23-year-old young man targeted because he was Jewish.
Halimi was kidnapped and held captive for more than three weeks in a Paris suburb. He was found naked, handcuffed and covered with burn marks near railroad tracks in the south of the French capital on February 13, 2006. He died on the way to the hospital.
Youssouf Fofana, the gang leader responsible for the anti-Semitic murder which shocked France with its brutality and led to anxiety in the Jewish community, chose not to appeal his conviction and life sentence.
His main accomplices, Samir Ait Abdelmalek and Jean-Christophe Soumbou, who were given sentences of 15 and 18 years, respectively, are also retried.
The trial is expected to continue through mid-December.
The retrial of the 17 people, all members of the “gang of barbarians” led by Fofana, came after French Justice Minister Michèle Alliot-Marie appealed the July 2009 sentences which were inferior to those sought by the prosecution.
The lower sentences handed to Fofana’s accomplices, including nine years for a young woman who lured Ilan Halimi into the gang's trap, and 15 and 18 years for two men cast as his "jailers," had drawn an angry response from Jewish groups.
Despite calls from the mother of Ilan Halimi that the debates be open to the public, “in order to show the face of anti-Semitism”, the appeal trial is held under a media blackout because some of the convicted were minors at the time of the killing. Last year’s trial was also closed to the public.