AFP - Members of a gang known as "The Barbarians" from the Paris suburbs will go on trial on Wednesday for the murder of a young Jewish man that shocked France for its sheer brutality.
   
Ilan Halimi was kidnapped and subjected to torture for 24 days before he was found naked and handcuffed to a tree near a railway track in February 2006. The 23-year-old died on his way to hospital.
   
Gang leader Youssouf Fofana and 26 others are to answer various charges during the trial, which will be held behind closed doors before a Paris juvenile court because two defendants were minors at the time of the crime.
   
Prosecutors describe 28-year-old Fofana as a "perverted megalomaniac" who instructed accomplices to target Jews for ransom kidnappings "because they are loaded with dough."
   
Fofana, also known as "Ossama" and "Mohammed", initially admitted to the murder but has since changed his version of the events several times and also switched lawyers some 30 times.
   
The French-born son of Ivorian immigrants is the only defendant facing a life sentence if convicted for the murder while 15 others are facing charges of kidnapping and sequestring.
   
A ringleader who recruited accomplices among apathetic youths, Fofana is accused of having stabbed Halimi and doused his body with rubbing alcohol before setting him alight.
   
Some of the remaining 11 in the dock are friends and family members of the gang who are being prosecuted for having failed to report an offence.
   
Halimi, a clerk in a Paris cell phone store, went missing on January 20, 2006 while on a date with a girl he had met at his workplace.
   
The girl turned out to be one of Fofana's accomplices, instructed to entrap Halimi by luring him to the basement of a building in a Paris suburb where he was attacked and subdued with ether.
   
Halimi was taken to a vacant apartment in the Paris suburb of Bagneux and Fofana demanded 450,000 euros (590,000 dollars) from his family in exchange for his release.
   
Several photographs, videotaped and audio-recorded messages of Halimi pleading for his life were released by his captors, showing him blindfolded and gaunt.
   
After a failed attempt to conclude a ransom deal with Halimi's father, Fofana's accomplices turned against the gang leader, saying the kidnapping had gone far enough, according to the prosecution's case.
   
On February 13, Fofana told them he planned to release Halimi who was loaded into the trunk of a stolen car. Three hours later, a train driver spotted the body next to the railroad tracks and alerted police.
   
Halimi was in a state of shock, his body covered with burns, cuts and bruises, and he died en route to hospital.
   
The victim's mother has accused police of having mishandled the investigation after officers at first said they believed anti-Semitism was not a factor in the crime.
   
Ruth Halimi is expected to ask the court to open the hearings to the public on the first day of the trial to provide a full accounting of her son's death.
   
Prosecutors believe the gang had used women to target nine other men in the kidnapping scheme but that these attempts failed.
   
Halimi's murder came months after France's high-immigrant suburbs exploded into rioting in late 2005 and the case quickly took on political overtones.
   
Tens of thousands of people took to the street to protest anti-Semitism some two weeks after Halimi's body was found.
   
Then president Jacques Chirac spoke to Halimi's parents and personally assured them that full light would be shed and those responsible brought to justice.
   
"This murder was a rare and extreme act. The motive was money first and anti-Semitism was an additional factor. But at the outset, it was not aimed at expressing hatred toward Jews," said Michel Wieviorka, author of a book on anti-Semitism in France.