Israel gang leader wanted for attempted murder, arrested in South Africa

An Israeli gang leader wanted for conspiracy to commit murder and attempted murder has been arrested in Johannesburg, South African police said on Thursday, Anadolu News Agency reports.

The 46-year-old man is attached to a criminal group in Israel called the “Abergil Organisation” and has been on Interpol’s Red Notice list since 2015, according to a police statement.

Interpol describes a Red Notice as “a request to law enforcement, worldwide, to locate and provisionally arrest a person pending extradition, surrender or similar legal action.”

The statement said Israeli authorities accuse the suspect of being “part of a notorious gang dealing in drug trafficking, extortion and other criminal activities.”

“In 2003 and 2004, this wanted suspect allegedly placed an explosive bomb underneath a vehicle of a man in Israel, in two separate incidents. As a result of the first explosion, five people sustained serious injuries, but all miraculously survived,” read the statement.

“In the second incident, the suspect also attempted to do the same with the same victim, where he placed a bomb on top of a vehicle. In this incident, three people also sustained serious injuries.”

He was arrested along with seven others in a joint operation at a house in Bryanston, an affluent Johannesburg suburb.

Five assault rifles, seven pistols, $40,000 in cash, and three suspected stolen motorcycles were seized in the raid, the police statement added.

READ: EU calls for immediate probe into Israel killing of Palestinian girl