Getty imagesFrench President Emmanuel Macron promised that all efforts will be made to find and punish the person who has shot a tree commemorating a murdered Jew.
The commemorative tree was planted 14 years ago to honor Ilan Halimi, who was tortured and murdered by a Paris gang in 2006, arousing generalized shock and indignation at the time.
Macron said that the slaughter of the olive tree Wednesday was “an attempt to kill him a second time”, adding: “All means are deployed to punish this act of hatred”.
The Paris police chief Laurent Nuñez confirmed that an investigation was underway, adding: “Everything will be done to find the authors and translate them into justice.”
Halimi’s body was found by a railway line handcuffed to a tree, naked and seriously burned, having been retained by the barbaric gang for more than three weeks.
He was attracted to a gang member in an empty apartment in February 2006, where he was attacked and drugged.
The kidnappers tried in vain to extort a ransom of € 450,000 ($ 600,000; £ 405,000) from his family, sending them painful images and video recordings.
The brain – Youssouf Fofana – has targeted Halimi because of his Jewish heritage, believing that his family was unduly rich.
Fofana was then sentenced to life prison with a minimum of 22 years, while other accomplices involved in crime were sentenced to less sentences.
Getty imagesThe Tree of the suburbs of Épinay-sur-Seine was one of the many commemorative monuments across the French capital for Halimi before being shot.
The local authority said that it was found reduced Thursday morning, by publishing an image showing the tree cut at the base and thrown into a flower of flowers nearby.
Macron said that France “will not forget this deceased child from France because he was Jewish”.
“Faced with anti-Semitism, the Republic is still without compromise,” he added.
French Prime Minister François Bayrou also blamed the “anti -Semitic hatred” for the abatual tree.
“No crime can uproot memory,” he wrote. “The endless fight against the deadly poison of hatred is our main duty.”
In 2019, another tree honoring Halimi would have been shot in what officials of the time described as an anti -Semitic attack.
And in 2017, the then minister of the then at the time, condemned the desecration of a plaque commemorating Halimi in which he was torn from a wall and covered with anti -Semitic writing.
