Huge raid: senior members of the Abu Latif crime organization in the north were arrested (police spokesmen)
Nidal Abu Latif (photo: official website, no)
Tonight's police raid on members of the Abu Latif crime organization puts the spotlight on one of the strongest crime organizations in Israel.
For several years now, the organization has been a central target of the police.
Already three years ago, officials in the law enforcement systems told Wala that there are elements among members of the Abu Latif family who possess many weapons and ammunition, including standard ones, such as were stolen from the IDF, and that they are engaged in importing drugs from Lebanon, Syria and Jordan, and launder the accumulated capital through stores. Change" for currency exchange, fuel marketing and trade in luxury vehicles.
According to a police report, compiled a few years before 2020, they warned of the ability of the Abu Latif family to infiltrate government institutions and of close ties with the criminal organizations from the center of the country.
The Abu Latif family is a Druze family from the village of Rama in the Galilee.
Druze, Christians and Muslims live in Rama and the settlement was previously considered quiet and excellent in its education system.
However, for more than a decade the level of violence in the village has increased sharply, and some have linked this to the activities of the Abu Latif organization.
According to the police, the organization is headed by four brothers, each of which is an independent arm, yet there are collaborations between the arms.
Nidal Abu Latif, 39 years old, and the youngest among the four is considered the oldest among the brothers.
He has been living in a large house in Kfar Vardim for several years and owns a company for contracting works.
Nidal himself has been detained for several months and two months ago an indictment was filed against him for the attempted murder of a businessman in a restaurant in Kfar Yasif. He will also be questioned following the arrests tonight.
The other three brothers are business owners - a bakery, an earthworks company, building contractors and more, but they were not arrested in the operation tonight.
were confiscated in the raid.
Lamborghini and Maybach vehicles at the police station, today (photo: official website, police)
Nidal Abu Latif's charge of attempted murder came after several years in which the police coordinated great efforts and "sat on the tail" of the brothers.
The surveillances, raids and investigations deepened the tension between the police and the brothers and if they resulted in indictments, they were not against the family members.
Thus, for example, three years ago an indictment was filed against Abbas Melhem, a resident of the Druze settlement of Kisra-Same near Karmiel.
The indictment recounts cases in which he arrived on contractors' patrols following tenders for works worth tens of millions of shekels held by local Druze authorities in the Galilee, and while making threats, two additional defendants dispersed the participants in the patrols.
This was the case, for example, in January 2020, during a tour of contractors who intended to compete for a tender for works totaling 31 million shekels, for the construction of a "Center for the Heritage of the Druze in Israel", which is planned to be built on the territory of the Yanoch-Jeth local council.
Thirty contractors came to the meeting and went on a field tour.
The investigators of the central unit of the North District of the police claimed that then, while the architect was explaining to the participants about the project, a luxury Volkswagen Touareg jeep appeared with Abbas.
He stood near them, and announced in a loud voice: "This tender belongs to the Abu Latif family, and whoever approaches the tender is approaching the Abu Latif family."
In those moments the tour ended, the contractors left the place and in the end only three companies approached the tender.
In the indictment against Melhem it was then alleged that "he had the audacity to threaten in a phone call the engineer of the Kasara-Samia Council, a person who holds a public position, with the aim of discouraging him from performing his duties freely and without fear and violating the rules of proper administration."
According to the indictment, Melhem called the council's engineer in connection with a development and paving tender in the neighborhood of the settlement and threatened him with the words: "I am cheating. This tender is ours and if you do something, we will take care of it."
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Luxury watches, mobiles and jewelry.
Among the confiscated loot (photo: Israel Police spokeswoman, police spokeswoman)
Abbas denied what was attributed to him.
In the same indictment, similar offenses of extortion by threats were also attributed to Wissam Fars and Ahsan Fars, both from the village of Rama.
Again the action of threats and intimidation is described: it is claimed that Wissam and Ahsan arrived on another contractor tour in Kisra Samia in a car with a fake number.
Melhem arrived at the scene in a Jeep Hummer.
While he was waiting by the jeep, the two of Rama approached the approximately 30 people who had come to the contractors' meeting, including the head of the council, circulated among the participants and Fars addressed about 15 of the participants personally and told them with threats and force that they should not dare to approach or approach the tender, when some of them explicitly informed Because the tender and the job "belong to the Abu Latif family".
In the northern district of the police, a special task force was assigned from the district police under the command of Chief of Staff Meni Binyamin, and its entire role was to deal with suspicions against the Abu Latif organization.
The task force that sits at the police station in Mouna is commanded by Chief Inspector Erez Navon, and has eight investigators.
Mercedes fleet in dictionaries.
At the police station today (photo: official website, police)
The police hope that the effort they coordinated and which reached its peak today will make the business owners who were blackmailed tell about what happened to them and add more information and more evidence about the extortion method.
This morning the police have the upper hand, but in the past such operations have led to reactions against violence such as shooting at banks and businesses and setting police cars on fire.
In addition to this, a conviction for the crime of extortion by threats should be based on evidence and the testimonies of those who are blackmailed.
The blackmailed may "forget" the moments of horror and the indictment in such a situation loses volume and the trial ends with lighter charges.
In such cases, where the criminal organization employs many "soldiers", it is not easy to reach those at the top of the pyramid and tie them directly to the actions.
This was the case in one of the largest cases investigated in recent years in the North District, which was concerned with the prolonged extortion of sponsorship fees in the Upper Galilee.
27 suspects, most of them from the village of Tuba, were then arrested in a large operation and at the end of a long investigation.
Charges were filed against 25 of them that could reach up to 15 years in prison.
In the end, the case ended in the district court in Nazareth with relatively light sentences, following a plea agreement between the attorney's office and the lawyers of the six main defendants in the case.
The two main defendants were finally sentenced to prison terms of 40 months and 33 months.
Coincidentally, or not, the night after the verdict, 14 shop windows were smashed in the Rosh Pina mall.
When the two defendants went free, a convoy of cars with jubilant passengers drove after them.
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