French leader Macron vows justice after unknown attackers chop down tree honoring murdered Jew

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PARIS (AP) — French President Emmanuel Macron pledged Friday that no effort will be spared to track down and prosecute unknown attackers who chopped down an olive tree planted in homage to a French Jew murdered in 2006.

The commemorative tree for Ilan Halimi, planted 14 years ago in the northern Paris suburb of Épinay-sur-Seine, was felled on Wednesday night, seemingly with a chainsaw. The town posted a photo on its Facebook page showing the tree's leafy, bushy top completely severed from its base, leaving just the stump poking from the ground.

“Cutting down the tree that honored Ilan Halimi is an attempt to kill him for a second time,” Macron posted on X. “It will not succeed: the Nation will not forget this child of France, killed because he was Jewish.”

“All means are being deployed to punish this act of hatred. In the face of antisemitism, the Republic is always uncompromising.” he added.

Halimi was found naked, handcuffed and covered with burn marks near railroad tracks in the Essonne region south of Paris on Feb. 13, 2006. He died on the way to the hospital after being held captive and tortured for more than three weeks. He was 23. The brutal killing revived worries in France about antisemitism and led to deep anxiety in France’s Jewish community, the largest in western Europe.

French Prime Minister François Bayrou, in a post on X, said the olive tree “was felled by antisemitic hatred.”

“No crime can uproot memory. The never-ending fight against the deadly poison of hatred is our foremost duty,” he wrote.

In a separate post, the Paris police chief condemned “this ignoble act” and said an investigation has been launched. “Everything will be done to find the perpetrators and deliver them to justice,” he pledged.

Attackers have previously desecrated other efforts to keep Halimi's memory alive. In 2017, a commemorative plaque near Paris was ripped off, thrown on the ground and covered with antisemitic writing.