Megalomaniac Gets Closed Door Trial

In France, the hate crime of the decade is being tried — behind closed doors.

Youssouf Fofana and 26 other alleged members of the gang des barbares [gang of barbarians] stand accused of abducting, torturing and ultimately murdering 23-year-old Ilan Halimi.  Fofana, the alleged ringleader, has left little room for doubt as to his involvement in the plot to extort 450,000 Euros from the Halimi family, nor has he made any bones about the anti-Semitic inspiration for the crime.  Members of the gang have admitted to targeting young Jewish men — and failing in three previous attempts using young girls as bait — because they believed that Jews were rich and that the community would pay for their release (as if in confirmation of August Bebel’s observation that anti-Semitism is the socialism of fools).

Yet it wasn’t until the days leading up to the ten-week trial, which began on April 29, that the French press seemed to notice that the case had been assigned to the cour d’assises des mineurs de Paris, a criminal court for minors, whose proceedings are closed to the public and the press, often even to the victims’ families. And this decision, or lack of decision as it turns out, was treated by the media as a fait accompli. Two of the alleged gang members — one of the “bait girls” and one of Halimi’s jailers — were minors at the time of the crime, and therefore under French law are entitled to closed hearings, unless they waive that right.  Fair enough.  Except, it was the decision of the Paris prosecutor general not to try the underage defendants separately that resulted in a closed court for all 27 gang members.

Unfortunately, we can only speculate what on earth the Paris prosecutor was thinking when he elected not to separate the cases.  No doubt Fofana provided a clue with his theatrical behavior at the public opening of the trial.  In an apparent attempt to taunt members of the victim’s family, Fofana gave his date of birth as the 13th of February, 2006 — the date Halimi’s body was found.  For a last name, he gave “Arab African Barbarian Army of the Salafist Revolt” and for a first, “fara”, meaning “guide”.  All of which cast his exclamation upon entering the courtroom of the takbir, a usually commonplace expression in Islam (God is great!), in a rather different light.  By the third day, he had openly mocked the Halimi family: “I told you to pay!”  and promised to put a price on the heads of the jury members.  Alas, a courtroom is the ultimate showcase for megalomaniacs.

Fofana’s choice of lawyers was perhaps another cause for worry — Emmanuel Ludot, who defended Saddam Hussein, and Isabelle Coutant-Peyre, wife of notorious imprisoned terrorist Carlos “the Jackal.” Their preferred legal strategy is to portray the trial as a political lynching. Ms. Coutant-Peyre told reporters Fofana had been “mistreated by a religious and political marketing campaign.”

But then, there is also the more malign possibility that the closed-door trial best serves the interests of the police, by allowing them to present their case beyond public scrutiny.  Ruth Halimi, the mother of the victim, has written a book called “24 Days: The Truth About the Death of Ilan Halimi”, which details what she sees as the many missteps of the police investigation.  Included in the book is the embarrassing revelation that Fofana was actually stopped by the Paris police for a routine “control,” but somehow the officers weren’t aware of the ongoing investigation, and let him go.

All of these factors might well have contributed to the decision to keep the proceedings closed, or none of them.  But since the decision was made behind the scenes, we can’t know, and that is precisely the problem, and the reason why the principle of open justice should be infringed upon only in exceptional cases.  “Publicity is the very soul of justice,” wrote Jeremy Bentham. “It keeps the judge, while trying, under trial.’  And in the absence of a public trial, which might have helped to exorcise the ignorant antisemitism that haunts France, we are left instead with the uncomfortable feeling that something is being swept under the rug.