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Murdered French Jew reburied in Jerusalem

09 Feb 2007 17:04:50 GMT
Source: Reuters

JERUSALEM, Feb 9 (Reuters) - A French Jewish man who was tortured and murdered in an attack near Paris last year was reburied in Jerusalem on Friday, an official said. Ilan Halimi was found, naked and burned, south of Paris last February after being held for three weeks by a gang demanding a large ransom. Halimi, 23, died of his injuries soon afterwards.

France's Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy said Halimi's killers were motivated by anti-Semitism and the murder shocked France, which has Europe's largest Muslim and Jewish minorities. Muslims number about 5 million and Jews 600,000.

Halimi was reburied in a Jerusalem cemetery at a ceremony attended by hundreds of people, including France's chief rabbi Joseph Sitruk, a spokesman for Israel's Jewish Agency said.

The spokesman said the agency, which promotes immigration to the Jewish state, helped bring his body to Israel.

"The hideous murder, motivated solely by anti-Semitism, is emblazoned in the heart of the Jewish people, the state of Israel and the Jewish Agency," Jewish Agency Chairman Zeev Bielski said in a eulogy at the funeral.

The Halimi killing and subsequent assaults on Jews have revived public debate about anti-Semitism in France.

The leader of Halimi's abductors denied that their action had been prompted by anti-Semitism, but Sarkozy said their actions were fuelled by the belief that all Jews were rich enough to pay ransoms.

Disaffected Muslim youths were widely blamed for a wave of anti-Semitic violence in the country earlier this decade. Many Arabs and Jews in France are immigrants and live uneasily side-by-side in poor neighbourhoods.

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Last updated:Fri Feb 9 17:06:27 2007