BRETT KLINE. EXCLUSIVE. Today is the 19th anniversary of the death of Ilan Halimi, age 23, from a modest sephardi family, working in a telephone store, kidnapped for ransom by the gang des barbares and tortured for three weeks in a sound- proof basement in a nice high-rise building in Bagneux south of Paris.
I wrote 4-5 articles on his kidnapping and the failure of the French police to find him and his assailants while he was alive. I spent a day with his mother in mourning. She told me this never would have happened in her native Morocco.
I accompanied the family in the plane to Ilan’s reburiaĺ outside Jerusalem. An American Jewish official there said he died a hero, a martyr for the Jewish people. He was dead wrong. Ilan died for nothing.
And in a cover story for the JPost magazine, I covered the last day of the triaĺ here in Paris in 2009, what the prosecutor called « au delà-beyond-de l’antisémitisme normal ».
I have no idea where the family is today. I can only offer a moment of silence and reflection for Ilan and for them.
Never forgive, never forget.
Zikhrono livracha, blessed be his memory.
Thank you all.
