3 arrested over cold case murders from 80s, 90s reportedly tied to Hasidic cult
Police on Sunday announced the arrest of three suspects over
their alleged connection to two unsolved murders in the 1980s and 90s near
Jerusalem.
According to Hebrew-language media reports, the suspects —
two men and a woman in their 60s from Jerusalem — are from the extremist Shuvu
Bonim sect led by convicted sex offender rabbi Eliezer Berland.
Reports said they were arrested over their involvement in
the disappearance of 17-year-old Nissim Shitrit, who was allegedly beaten by
the sect’s “religious police” four months before he was last seen in January
1986.
Shitrit reported the assault to police at the time, and
identified a number of suspects, who were apparently never charged.
In a 2020 documentary released by the Kan public broadcaster,
one of Berland’s former disciples said that the religious police murdered the
boy, dismembered him, and buried his body parts in the Eshtaol Forest near Beit
Shemesh. His remains were never found and the case was never solved.
Shitrit’s brother, Meir, told Kan on Sunday that at the time
a group of Shuvu Bonim members were arrested over the incident, but they
remained silent and were eventually released without charge.
“I don’t believe the police would re-arrest the same people,
knowing they would remain silent,” he added, saying he hoped there had been a
development with the case.
Meir Shitrit explained that he cannot sit shiva, the Jewish
mourning ritual, for his younger brother since he does not know “for sure” if
he was murdered.
“The documentary has a man, whose name can’t be said
currently, admitting to me that he knew Nissim was murdered. But he wasn’t
prepared to incriminate himself,” he told Kan.
“We want to know where my brother was hidden, in order to
give him a [proper] burial,” Shitrit added.
The second murder reportedly connected to the arrested
suspects was of 41-year-old Avi Edri in 1990, who was found beaten to death in
Ramot Forest in the north of Jerusalem.
In the Kan documentary, Edri’s murder was tied to Shuvu
Bonim by former disciples. It too remains unsolved for over 30 years.
Police said Sunday that the individuals were arrested and
questioned over allegations of kidnapping, murder and conspiracy to commit a
crime. Most details of the investigation are under a gag order in place until
the end of the year.
The suspects were brought before a Jerusalem court on Sunday
afternoon, to request an extension to their remand amid the investigation. The
court ordered all three arrested suspects to remain in custody for another
eight days. More suspects related to the two murders are expected to be
detained, police said.
An attorney for the female suspect told the court that her
client was a victim of the extremist sect, and is cooperating with police in
order to see justice done. According to the attorney, the woman was forced by
members of the sect to lure one of the victims to a specific location.
The cult-like Shuvu Bonim offshoot of the Bratslav Hasidic
sect commanded by Berland has had repeated run-ins with the law, including
attacking witnesses.
Berland fled Israel in 2013 amid allegations that he had
sexually assaulted several female followers. After evading arrest for three
years and slipping through various countries, Berland returned to Israel and
was sentenced to 18 months in prison in November 2016 on two counts of indecent
acts and one case of assault, as part of a plea deal that included seven months
of time served. He was freed just five months later, in part due to his ill
health.
Berland was arrested for fraud in February 2020 after
hundreds of people filed police complaints saying that he had sold prayers and
pills to desperate members of his community, promised families of individuals
with disabilities that their loved ones would be able to walk, and told
families of convicted felons that their relatives would be freed from prison.
Last May, he was further charged with tax evasion,
violations of money laundering laws, and other offenses for failing to report
and concealing income generated through his activities with Shuvu Bonim.
Berland is set to return to prison this month after being
convicted of fraud in a plea deal in June that saw him sentenced to 18 months
in prison. But the sentence will include time already served, after Berland
spent a year in jail before being released to house arrest in February of this
year.
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