On the initiative of the Jewish Agency for Israel, and at the request of his family, the remains of Ilan Halimi, a 23-year old Jew murdered last year in Paris in an antisemitic attack, were reinterred in Jerusalem on Friday, February 9, 2007, in the Givat Shaul cemetery. His mother, Ruth Halimi, his two sisters, Yael and Anne-Laure and other family members accompanied the coffin.
Ilan Halimi was brutally murdered on February 13, 2006 by a gang of Muslim immigrants, who kidnapped and tortured him for three weeks solely because he was Jewish.
The Chairman of the Jewish Agency Zeev Bielski said: “The reburial of Ilan Halimi in Israel is the closing of a Zionist circle. The family’s decision to tie their fate with the State of Israel, especially in such tragic circumstances, is a message clearly felt, one which expresses the unity of the Jewish people. The hideous murder, motivated solely by antisemitism, is emblazoned in the heart of the Jewish people, the State of Israel and the Jewish Agency, which has placed as a goal the struggle against this repugnant manifestation of hatred which is raising its ugly head around the world.”