Reacting to the sentencing of more than twenty gang members convicted for the kidnapping, torture and murder of her 23 year-old son, Ilan, Ruth Halimi declared herself to be “frightened” at the relatively lenient terms received by all the defendants other than the ringleader. The trial of Ilan’s murderers was not public, she noted, because two of the defendants were minors when the crime was committed. As a result, French society was denied a vital insight into the violent, delinquent antisemitism which festers in its banlieues. Had the horrific details of Ilan’s ordeal been recounted in the public eye, these prison terms, one as light as six months suspended, would have been much tougher.
