By JERUSALEM POST STAFF
The father of Ilan Halimi, whose brutal killing captured nationwide attention spoke out Tuesday about the negotiations with his son's kidnappers.
The kidnappers "were just too happy to have a little Jew on their hands," Didier Halimi said in an interview, his first, with the French daily, Le Monde, appearing in Wednesday's edition.
When, during the course of nearly three weeks of negotiations with the kidnappers, Didier Halimi told them he could not afford the €450,000 (US$540,000) ransom, they told him to go "ask the Jewish community for the money," he said.
Halimi defended the police, who have come under fire from his ex-wife and two daughters, saying that "it's always easy to criticize after the fact," and that officers on the case "worked like crazy."