FRENCH police are hunting a group of kidnappers who tortured to death a young man after he was lured into their hands by an attractive woman.

Officers suspect that the crime was committed by a group of young men and women from the housing estates of the Paris suburbs. The group is believed to have made up to half a dozen attempts to seize victims around Paris until three weeks ago, when they kidnapped a 23-year-old shop assistant called Ilan. In all the suspected kidnap attempts, a young woman chatted up the intended victim, always a young man, and exchanged telephone numbers with him.

Ilan was abducted on January 21 after a date with a blonde woman who had befriended him in his shop in a Jewish quarter of the 11th arrondissement. Last Monday he was found, naked, bound and gagged near a suburban railway station in south Paris. More than 80 per cent of his body had been burnt. He died on the way to hospital.

The kidnappers had sent e-mails to police with pictures of their captive, and demanded a ransom of £300,000, which Ilan’s family was unable to raise. The kidnappers repeatedly broke off negotiations, and at first appeared uninterested in a smaller ransom, officers said. “It is as if they were just playing a game,” one officer said. The kidnappers eventually asked for £3,000. However, no ransom was paid, the kidnappers broke off contact and the young man’s body was found a few days later.

Laurent Montet, a profiler of serial killers, said: “This is not a crime with a classic motive. There is no vengeance or plausible profit, not even a motive of passion. It seems to be a gratuitous ‘play’ crime, directed against society as a whole.”

Police said that at least three suspects were of African origin. They have issued a photograph of one suspect, and a photofit of the woman who lured Ilan to his death. Officers have questioned a man who said that he had been asked to serve as a courier with ransom money. They do not believe that he was directly linked to the crime. The method of luring kidnap victims through sexual advances formed the plot of a 1980s film, L’Appat (The Bait).

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