According to a report by Times of Israel, a 46-year-old alleged gang leader attached to a criminal organisation in Israel called the “Abergil Organisation” has been nabbed.
He was arrested on Thursday morning in a raid in Bryanston, Johannesburg.
He was picked up in a suburb of Johannesburg, South Africa together with seven others during an early morning house raid, according to a police statement.
Times of Israel reports that the gang is said to deal in drug trafficking, extortion and other criminal activities.
The arrest operation was led by a joint team of Interpol investigators and South African police, assisted by intelligence provided by Israeli police.
Police spokesperson Col Athlenda Mathe said the Israeli has been on Interpol’s Red Notice since 2015.
“He is a wanted suspect in Israel for conspiracy to commit murder and attempted murder,” she said.
According to Israeli authorities, the suspect is part of a notorious gang dealing in drug trafficking, extortion and other criminal activities. In 2003 and 2004, the wanted suspect allegedly placed bombs under 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.
Mathe said in the second incident, the suspect placed a bomb on top of the same victim’s vehicle. In this incident, three people sustained serious injuries.
“During an early morning takedown operation, the team pounced on an identified address in Bryanston and found the suspect and seven others, 12 firearms including five assault rifles and seven pistols and $40,000.
“Three suspected stolen motorcycles were also seized,” she said.
The authorities are not naming him until he appears in court, which is expected within 48 hours.
The police seized five assault rifles, seven pistols and three suspected stolen motorcycles during the raid.
According to the Times of Israel, the Abergil crime syndicate has long been considered a central player in Israel’s criminal underworld.
In June, Abergil was sentenced to three life sentences and an additional 30 years behind bars by an Israeli court for the murder of three uninvolved bystanders during an attempted hit in 2003, due to his role as head of an organized crime group that carried out the bombing.
While Abergil was not accused of carrying out the attack himself, judges charged that he “initiated and planned the incident that would harm civilians,” and described the attack as “a cruel, unbridled plan, no different from a terror attack.”
Last month, an Israeli citizen with reported ties to organised crime was gunned down in Cape Town. Initial reports said he had travelled to South Africa to try and distance himself from the gangland fighting in Israel.
