24 Days

On January 20, 2006, Ilan Halimi, chosen because he was Jewish, was kidnapped and taken to an apartment in Bagneux, France. He was held and tortured there for over three weeks before being thrown into the woods by his executioners. Found naked along a railroad track, he did not survive his ordeal. In this poignant memoir, originally published in French, Ruth Halimi, Ilan's mother, recalls the twenty-four days of this nightmare during which she received over 600 phone calls, ransom demands that constantly changed, insults, threats, and pictures of her tortured son. Police procedures repeatedly failed. The case was eventually solved and the kidnappers, who later earned the name of "le Gang des Barbares," led by an Ivorian immigrant, Youssouf Fofana, were arrested by police. What shocked the public at the time was that Fofana and his gang members claimed openly that they thought Jews were wealthy and united, and for this reason they imagined the Jewish community would pull together to p