Jewish man killed in Paris...

This is frightening.

Thirteen people, all members of a dangerous and extremely violent gang, have been arrested following an investigation into the murder of a young Jewish man in the Paris area, French police announced Friday.

Meanwhile a difference of opinion arose surrounding the motivation for the murder. The Paris public prosecutor declared that “anti-semitism did not appear to be the motive” of the kidnappers of the 23-year-old Ilan Halimi,” while family members of the murdered man suspect the contrary.

Trying to calm the Jewish community’s anger, the umbrella group of French Jewish secular organisations, CRIF, issued a statement on Friday calling on the Jewish community “to keep calm, cautious and wait for developments in the investigation.”

Among the arrested suspects – aged between 17 and 32- are three women who were used by the gang to attract their prey. They were all arrested in the Paris suburbs. A person living in Brussels was also said to be under international arrest warrant.

According to an informed source, the head of the gang has been identified as the 26-year-old Youssef Fofana, a Black Muslim who is calling himself “brain of the barbarians." He is already known to the police services as “extremely dangerous.”

Fofana has not yet been arrested but an identikit of him was handed to the press by the Paris public prosecutor, Jean-Claude Marin.

“He knows he is searched,” Marin said Friday.

“He insulted Ilan Halimi’s family members by calling them yesterday and issuing death threats if they did not pay the ransom,” he added.

he investigation by some 200 policemen quickened after Ilan Halimi was found last Monday severely wounded, naked and hand-cuffed along a railway track in the suburb of Saint Genevieve des Bois, 30 kilometres south of Paris. Halimi’s body was found three weeks after he was kidnapped by a gang