30 Suspected Pedophiles Busted in Israel
About 30 individuals suspected of pedophilia were arrested overnight Tuesday, the result of a police operation in which an undercover female officer assumed the identity of a 12-year-old-girl.
During the operation, called “computerized interception,” a large police contingent stormed the houses of suspects all over the country, from Be’er Sheva in the south, to Kiryat Shemona in the north. The suspects will be brought to the magistrate’s court in Ramle, to await further proceedings.
In most cases, the suspects initiated meetings with the undercover police officer, and some of the suspects arrived for those meetings with contraceptive devices. Three suspects were immediately brought into custody, as investigators determined that they were liable to harm children as the investigation progresses. Investigators were able to document some of the suspects performing indecent acts in front of webcams.
The suspects arrested range in age from 35 to 56, and include academics, security personnel, as married men, with children. According to investigators, suspects are generally educated, with no criminal background.
The operation was launched roughly three months ago, as a man suspected of distributing pedophilic materials was arrested by the Central District’s fraud unit. Police suspected the man arrested was in possession of “relatively low-level material” – for instance, there were no nude photos among the materials.
For more, go to Haaretz.com
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO