LOL LOL LOL DID THEY MEET IN CAGE.........................

Chief Rabbi's son arrested in kidnapping, abuse case

By Roni Singer, Haaretz Correspondent, and Haaretz Service

Police arrested Chief Sephardi Rabbi Shlomo Amar's son, wife, and daughter Thursday in connection with the alleged kidnapping and beating of an ultra-Orthodox youth.

The Tel Aviv Magistrate's Court on Friday morning extended the remand of Amar's son, Meir, and released the rabbi's wife and daughter to house arrest.

According to the accusations, ten days ago the three family members, likely in cooperation with Palestinians from the territories, kidnapped and imprisoned the youth for two days.






Police believe the motive in the kidnapping was the family's disapproval of the friendship between the rabbi's 18-year-old daughter Ayala and the 17-year-old Bnei Brak youth. The two met in an internet chat room.

After his release, the youth filed a complaint with police, who opened an investigation into the affair.

Shlomo Amar was not questioned by police and is not a suspect in the case, but police said there was no escape from questioning him on whether he knew of the affair. He is currently on a visit abroad.

Meretz MK Avshalom Vilan called on Attorney General Menachem Mazuz on Friday to investigate Amar, Army Radio reported.

The prime suspect, Meir Amar, has been leading a secular life away from his parents' home for the last 20 years, and living at different addresses.

In his complaint, the Haredi youth claimed Ayala Amar convinced him to meet her in a Bnei Brak street, where he got into a car driven by her brother, Meir. He was then taken from Bnei Brak to the Israeli Arab town of Kalansua, where he was imprisoned in a room in a house owned by Meir Amar's two friends, also suspected of involvement in the affair.

Police believe the youth was beaten throughout the night in front of Ayala Amar. He was seriously wounded by the beating, Israel Radio reported.

Meir Amar is then believed to have taken the youth to the chief rabbi's house, where he continued to abuse him, including when the rabbi was home.

Police suspect that the rabbi's wife, Mazal Amar, was the one who asked Meir Amar to intervene and terminate the relationship between the two youths. Police decided to arrest Ayala Amar for allegedly not trying to stop the beating.

Meir Amar confessed to the accusations against him, but denies that his mother was involved.

"This affair sounds like a Clockwork Orange scene," one of the police investigators said. "The brother, together with the two village residents, badly beat the complainant. They cut his prayer locks, tore up his skullcap, threatened him with knives and abused him for long hours, until the morning."

Another of Rabbi Amar's sons who is not a suspect, Eliyahu Amar, accompanied his family on Friday to court in Tel Aviv. "My brother does not live with the family," he told Haaretz. "My parents mourn the fact that he adapted a mentality that is not at all connected to our home. If it becomes clear that this is true, this is not connected to the education we received in our home. In our home, no one even touches a fly."

Eliyahu Amar also said the family knew about the relationship between Ayala and the young man. "We spoke with them in a pleasant manner in an effort to end the relationship," he said. "In our society, a friendly relationship like this between a young man and woman it is not acceptable. For me, today, I feel the same thing I felt when I mourned for my wife [who was killed] in a car accident."

The suspects' lawyer, Benny Katz, said that family had no knowledge of the incident. Nevertheless, he said the family considered the contact between Ayala Amar and the young man "an immoral relationship" because they were not married.

Katz emphasized said Rabbi Amar and his wife had no knowledge of the incident. However, he admitted that Ayala Amar was present at the time of the incident but did not participate in the abuse of the young man.

He also claimed police were attempting to blur the case's evidence.

The court lifted a media ban regarding the case Friday afternoon.