Sunday, March 05, 2006

Horror in France

A group of at least 19 French men and women collude to abduct a young jewish man and torture him for about 3 weeks. Somehow, before dying, he crawls from the woods where his body was dumped, and the murder is discovered. His murderers prove to be as incompetent as they are evil; many have been caught.

Craig Smith of the NYT tells the story in an understated manner. He fully captures the horror of this crime, not the least the number of neighbors who knew of it and did nothing. I cannot think of a comparable [1] crime in the history of the modern western world; even the brutal murders of gay men in the US are not quite in this league.

France is now in a Hell of its own making.

[1] I mean that in a precise sense. There have been worse crimes perpetrated by states, but they were crimes of states, not individuals. There have been vile mass murders and torturers aplenty, but they have acted alone or with a single accomplice. Maybe the KKK did something like this in their day.

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