JERUSALEM: A rabbi has been arrested in Jerusalem on suspicion of holding dozens of women and children in conditions of slavery, Israeli police said Monday.
The 60-year-old suspect was detained on suspicion of running a “closed community” where women and children “worked under conditions of slavery,” police said in a statement.
A two-month investigation was launched after officers received reports that the religious leader had for years committed “severe offenses” against those living at the residence, police said.
Some 50 women and a number of children under five were found when police raided the site, where victims were thought to have been isolated from the outside world.
A police video of the raid, in a central ultra-Orthodox neighborhood of Jerusalem, showed cramped living quarters with bunk beds as well as piles of cash.
“The suspect also punished the women in different ways and stole money from them,” police said.
Eight women accused of aiding the rabbi were also detained and are being held on suspicion of slavery.
The arrests come after ultra-Orthodox women launched a campaign in November urging those in their community to speak up about domestic abuse.
Ultra-Orthodox Jews make up around 10 percent of Israel’s population and live in close-knit communities often closed off from wider society.
Jerusalem rabbi arrested for slavery after women found
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Jerusalem rabbi arrested for slavery after women found
- The rabbi was detained on suspicion of running a “closed community” where women and children “worked under conditions of slavery”
Palestinian NGO condemns Israeli act of ‘revenge’ after prisoner abuse video
- A Palestinian NGO has denounced what it called an Israeli act of revenge after a video showed far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir overseeing the abuse of detainees in a military prison
RAMALLAH: A Palestinian NGO has denounced what it called an Israeli act of revenge after a video showed far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir overseeing the abuse of detainees in a military prison.
Just days before the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, Ben Gvir held a tour of Ofer Prison in the occupied West Bank, Israel’s Channel 7 reported.
In footage filmed on Friday and broadcast by the channel, around 20 police officers are seen storming a hallway leading to prison cells, brandishing their weapons and firing stun grenades.
They then pull five detainees from their cells, their hands tied behind their backs, forcing them face-down onto the floor.
The operation took place as a bill proposing the death penalty for Palestinian prisoners convicted of terrorism awaited a final vote in the Israeli parliament.
“This is all part of ongoing displays meant to take revenge on Palestinian detainees,” Abdallah al?Zaghari, head of the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club, told AFP on Saturday.
“Everything Ben Gvir and the far?right government are doing affects not only the Palestinian people and prisoners in detention camps — it also impacts the global legal and human rights system,” he added.
Ben Gvir, known for his inflammatory rhetoric, is considered one of the most hard-line members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling coalition.
“It is simply a source of pride — arriving at a prison like this, a prison for terrorists, the vilest of the vile, seeing them like this,” Ben Gvir said in the video.
“I want one more thing: to execute them — the death penalty for terrorists,” he added.
Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas on Saturday said the remarks were “a new war crime and a blatant challenge to international humanitarian law regarding prisoners.”
International rights groups have repeatedly warned of alleged abuse and mistreatment inflicted in Israeli prisons since Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israel.
While the death penalty exists for a small number of crimes in Israel, it has become a de facto abolitionist country, with the Nazi Holocaust perpetrator Adolf Eichmann the last person to be executed in 1962.
