The kidnappers, believing that all Jews are rich, repeatedly contacted the victim's modestly placed family demanding very large sums of money.

[3] On 20 January 2006, one of the perpetrators, Sorour Arbabzadeh (known as Yalda or Emma[4]), a 17-year-old girl of French-Iranian origin,[5] went to the phone store in Paris where Halimi worked and struck up a conversation with him.

[8] The abductors, who called themselves the Gang of Barbarians, tortured him and sent phone and video messages to his family while they were in contact with the police.

During the 24 days of abduction, the leader of the gang, Youssouf Fofana, managed to travel back and forth to his home country of Ivory Coast.

At some point he was suspected of being related to the gang and was taken to the police station, but they were forced to release him due to a lack of proof of his connection to the group.

The demand for ransom, initially elevated at 450,000 euros, diminished as the abductors got more anxious with the attention they were drawing from the police and media.

The decision by the police to keep certain matters secret was seen as counter-productive, and may have prevented a facial composite of Sorour Arbabzadeh ("Emma"), the girl who lured Halimi to the apartment.

In order to convince Halimi's parents their son had been kidnapped, the abductors sent a picture of the young man being threatened by a gun and holding a newspaper to prove the date and time.

[13] Police have attributed to the banlieues' gang subculture a "poisonous mentality that designates Jews as enemies along with other 'outsiders,'" such as Americans, mainstream French, and Europeans in general.

Halimi stated that she wrote the book to "alert public opinion to the danger of anti-semitism which has returned in other forms, so that a story like this can never happen again".

Gang leader Youssouf Fofana was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum of 22 years before the possibility of parole.

[27] Francis Szpiner spoke for Ruth Halimi, saying, "A public trial would have helped [people] better understand the criminal machine, to make parents and teenagers reflect.

Sorour Arbabzadeh, the then-17-year-old French-Iranian woman who acted as bait to trap Halimi, was sentenced to 9 years imprisonment.

[34] Richard Prasquier, president of CRIF, France's main Jewish organization, said that a law may soon be available that would preclude closed-door trials in this type of case.

[36] On 22 February 2008, six members of a group calling themselves Barbarians assaulted 19-year-old Mathieu Roumi in the same Paris suburb of Bagneux where Halimi was kidnapped.

Present were public figures such as Philippe Douste-Blazy, François Hollande, Lionel Jospin and Nicolas Sarkozy.

Also among the participants were Dalil Boubakeur, head of the Paris Mosque and Chairman of the Council of Muslims in France, and Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger.

[42] Right-wing politician Philippe de Villiers was booed by far-left militants and had to leave under police guard.

[43] Following the murder of Halimi, Jewish spokesman for the French Socialist Party Julien Dray claimed that the murder was the result of a “Dieudonné effect.”[44] The comment was made in reference to French comedian Dieudonné M'bala M'bala, whose rise to fame has been persistently entangled with antisemitic commentary.

[45] In 2014, a French court ruled that Dieudonné was not responsible for posting and spreading a 2010 video that called for the release of Fofana.

The video also expressed condemnation of the “powerful Jewish lobby,” an antisemitic trope that has been center-stage of Dieudonné’s comedy acts.

[48] On 9 May, the United States Helsinki Commission held a briefing titled "Tools for Combatting Anti-Semitism: Police Training and Holocaust Education" chaired by Commission Co-Chairman Chris Smith (a Republican representative) who said: "[Halimi's] tragedy made brutally clear that Jews are still attacked because they are Jews, and that our work to eradicate all forms of anti-Semitism in all its ugly forms and manifestations is far from done.

"[49] Ilan Halimi was initially buried in the Cimetière parisien de Pantin near Paris, and the funeral drew a large Jewish crowd.