More on that anti-semitic murder in France....

Now, the police are certain the act was anti-semitic.

French investigators were heading to Ivory Coast yesterday to hunt down the leader of a gang that tortured and murdered a young Jewish man, a crime now suspected to be motivated by anti-Semitism and which has provoked outrage among French Jews.

Yousouf Fofana, 25, who styled himself in English as "the brain of the barbarians," is wanted for his role in the killing of Ilan Halimi, a 23-year-old telephone salesman who disappeared from a Paris nightclub on Jan. 21.

The gang leader, who is of Ivorian origin and "known to police," left on a flight to the Ivory Coast capital, Abidjan, under his own name on Feb. 15.

Ten of his accomplices, including Africans, Berbers and a Portuguese man, are being questioned, and more arrests are expected. The gang included two women whose role was to entice the victims.

Yesterday, Nicolas Sarkozy, the French Interior Minister, confirmed what many had feared -- that the torture and killing was an anti-Semitic crime -- and said police had found literature linking some suspects to Muslim causes.

There's more....

But it appeared they had little interest in actually collecting the money. Instead, gang members used the e-mails and phone calls as excuses to bombard Mr. Halimi's relatives and a rabbi with anti-Semitic jibes and extracts from the Koran.