Paris  - The leader of gang that commited a brutal anti- Semetic murder and kidnapping in Paris was sentenced to life in prison on Friday.

Youssouf Fofana was among the 27 people charged in the January 2006 killing of a 23-year-old Jewish cellphone salesman Ilan Halimi.

Two other gang leaders were sentenced to 15 and 18 years in prison, and a then underaged woman who served as a shill received a nine-year sentence. Two of the 27 people charged were acquitted.

The defendants, between 21 and 35 years of age, were accused of being members of a gang that called itself the Barbarians and targeted Jews for abduction because Fofana believed all Jews had money and would not hesitate to pay a ransom.

Halimi was lured by a 17-year-old girl into the hands of Fofana's gang of multi-ethnic immigrants most of whom lived in the same run- down housing estate in the Paris suburb of Bagneux.

Over a period of more than three weeks, Halimi was insulted, stabbed and burned with lit cigarettes before being dumped, naked, near a suburban train station. He died on his way to hospital on February 13.

While they held him, the members of the gang took photographs and made audio tapes of the weeping Halimi and sent them to his family with demands for a ransom of 450,000 euros (594,000 dollars).

Police originally had dismissed the possibility that the killing was at least partly motivated by racial hatred. But then-interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy Nicolas Sarkozy said Halimi had been selected because the gang "believed, and I am quoting, 'that Jews have money'."

The two-and-a-half-month trial was held behind closed doors because several of the accused were minors when the crime was committed. (dpa)