5 Israelis Detained for 'Puzzling
Behavior' After WTC Tragedy
By YOSSI MELMAN
Five Israelis who had worked for a moving company based in New Jersey are being
held in U.S. prisons for what the Federal
Bureau of Investigation [FBI] has described as "puzzling behavior"
following the terror attack on the World Trade Center
in New York last Tuesday. The five are expected to be deported sometime soon.
The families of the five, who asked that their names not be released, said
that their sons had been questioned by the FBI
for hours on end, had been kept in solitary confinement for three days, and
had been humiliated, stripped of their clothes
and blindfolded.
The mother of one of the young men explained the chain of events as she understands
it to Ha'aretz:
She said that the five had worked for the company, which is owned by an Israeli,
for between two months and two years. They
had been arrested some four hours after the attack on the Twin Towers while
filming the smoking skyline from the roof of their
company's building, she said. It appears that they were spotted by one of the
neighbors who called the police and the FBI.
The mother said that the families and friends of the five in Israel had known
nothing of the men's whereabouts for a number
of days.
"When they finally let my son make a phone call for the first time to
a friend in the United States two days ago, he told him
that he had been tortured by the FBI in a basement," the mother said. "He
was stripped to his underwear; he was blindfolded and questioned for 14 hours.
They thought that because he has citizenship of a European country as well as
of Israel that he
was working for the Mossad [Israel's secret service]."
Seven FBI agents later stormed the apartment of one of the Israelis, searched
it and questioned his roommate. The Israeli
owner of the company, who has U.S. citizenship, was also questioned. Both men
were subsequently released.
The families here complained that the Israeli consulate in New York and the
situation room set up by the Foreign Ministry there
to locate missing Israelis had done nothing to help their sons. The Foreign
Ministry told the families that the FBI had denied
holding the five and that the consulate had chosen to believe the FBI, the mother
said.
The five were transferred out of the FBI's facility on Saturday morning and
are now being held in two prisons in New Jersey by
the Immigration and Naturalization Services. They are charged with illegally
residing in the United States and working there
without permits.
The Foreign Ministry said in response that it had been informed by the consulate
in New York that the FBI had arrested the five for "puzzling behavior."
They are said to have had been caught videotaping the disaster and shouting
in what was interpreted as cries of joy and mockery.
[© Copyright 2001 Ha'aretz]