PARIS, March 5, 2006 (AFP) - The prime suspect in the shocking kidnapping, torture and murder of a young Frenchman insisted on the weekend that money, not anti-Semitism, was the only motive in the crime, according to investigators Sunday.

But the statements made by Youssouf Fofana, a 25-year-old French Muslim, after his extradition Saturday from Ivory Coast, did little to dispel a widespread perception in France that he was part of a gang that targeted the victim because he was Jewish.

He and other suspected members of the gang who allegedly abducted Ilan Halimi, a 23-year-old mobile telephone salesman, in Paris in January are under criminal investigation for kidnapping and murder aggravated by anti-Semitism.

In all, 22 people are now under investigation, with 19 in custody, for having allegedly lured Halimi into a trap by using a young woman as "bait".

Gang members mutilated Halimi over three weeks before dropping him, dying, naked and bound, alongside a railway track outside Paris last month.

Much of France's 600,000-strong Jewish community, and many media, see the crime as the worst example yet of what they believe to be a rising trend of anti-Jewish sentiment in France, particularly among its five million Muslims whose families mostly hail from west and north Africa.

Yet investigators determined to present the most watertight case possible are being extremely careful in their handling of the affair. They are hesitant to label the crime as principally anti-Semitic before fully questioning the suspects and their motives.

Fofana, a petty criminal born in a Paris suburb, was arrested in Ivory Coast -- the country of his immigrant parents -- on February 15, two days after Halimi was found dying.

He was extradited to Paris on a French military plane on Saturday after failing to convince an Abidjan court he had Ivorian citizenship.

On his arrival, handcuffed and wearing a bullet-proof vest, he was immediately transported in a heavily armed police convoy to the investigating magistrates in charge of the murder case, who formally indicted him.

 1 2 Next >