“They fired in every direction, it was wild and terrifying,” the owner of the Offside kiosk – the scene of the attempted assassination of Charlie Abutbul – recounted. “I came out of the kitchen and suddenly heard shots being fired. People went down with gunshot wounds, I saw one man clutching his shoulder. I hit the floor,” the man said, pointing to the bullet holes which riddled the walls of his business.

The holes had been circled by police forensic officers who combed through the kiosk hours after the shooting.

“Today they kill indiscriminately. In the old days a hit would have been ‘clean,’ only the target would have been struck. Now they shoot up everything,” said the man, still visibly shaken by what he witnessed, in a quiet voice.

“I get my son to work here with me often. Children and pregnant mothers could have been here,” he said. Bullet holes also riddled the man’s car, which had two baby seats in the rear. “We can’t make a living here safely. What am I supposed to do? I’ve already replaced the store windows. I don’t want any memory of what happened here. This is like a terrorist attack,” the man said.

A few hundred meters away, at the Abutbul-owned Bat Haikar (“Farmer’s daughter”) restaurant, two tense-looking, heavily-built men in black t-shirts smoked cigarettes at the restaurant’s entrance. “Those are the Abutbuls’ bodyguards. Usually there’s one at the front and one in the back,” a woman who works nearby said.

Francois Abutbul, Charlie’s son, oversees the restaurant, she added. Like many area residents, she was hesitant to speak her mind. “Even if I did hear the shots yesterday, I didn’t hear the shots,” she said. She did say, however, that the neighborhood was feeling highly insecure in the wake of the shooting. “We see the guards all the time,” she said.

A man who heard the shooting yesterday said he had quickly exited the area after the attack. “I’ve known Charlie since I was a kid,” he said, adding that he did not wish to comment on effect the Abutbul’s presence had on the local neighborhood. “I heard four shots fired. By chance, an ambulance passed by and started evacuating the wounded,” he said.

As police try to piece together the cause of Monday’s assassination attempt, a number of theories have come forward. One possibility is that the hit was orchestrated by Charlie’s own nephew, Francois Abutbul.

According to some sources, one of Charlie’s sons, Adam, reportedly a rising star in the Netanya underworld, had stabbed Francois. Charlie, this story goes, then called a sit-down meeting with Francois in an effort to make peace. But the meeting didn’t go well, with Charlie reportedly slapping Francois and telling him he “did not know how to behave.” The aggrieved Francois then arranged the hit, according to the theory.

On Monday, organized crime expert Prof. Menachem Amir said the Abergil crime family may have been behind the shooting. The police’s National and International Serious Crimes Unit and the anti-organized crime unit Lahav 443 have taken the lead in the investigation. No arrests have been made so far.

Earlier on Monday, Knesset Member Ami Ayalon proposed putting high-risk mobsters under administrative detention to protect the public. The suggestion was dismissed by former National Fraud Unit head Cmdr. (ret.) Moshe Levin, who said it was not practical.

In the shadow of the mafia, Netanya residents fear for their lives – By YAAKOV LAPPIN – Sep 9, 2008 – JPost.com – This story was found at: http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1220802297705&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Public Security Minister Avi Dichter outlined on Tuesday these and other changes – some of which are already underway, whether as pilot programs or in the final stages of planning and organization.

Dichter prefers to call the nascent network “the crime fighting fist” rather than the FBI, but whatever the nickname, the purpose remains the same – to pool police resources to deliver a more effective response to Israel’s organized crime syndicates.

The organization, whose commander Lt.-Cmdr. Yoav Segelovich will answer directly to the chief of police, combines a handful of the police’s most elite investigative units that currently exist on a national level and are subordinate to Intelligence and Investigations Division chief Cmdr. Yohanan Danino.

White-collar crime fighting experts within the National Fraud Squad, the Economic Crimes Unit and the International and Serious Crimes Unit will all serve under Segelovich’s unified command, together with the Etgar Unit which combats vehicle theft; the new directorate will also take to the field with the elite Gidonim Unit – currently Jerusalem District’s undercover anti-terror experts.

For some time, top police brass had considered merging the unit – exceptional at a district level – with the Yamam, Israel Police’s elite counter-terror unit, but the discussion was apparently put to rest once the Gidonim were fingered as the muscle behind the “fist”.

Echoing concepts of anti-terror strategies, Dichter explained that it took multifaceted units to combat the multifaceted enterprise of organized crime, which does not focus on one area of operation, but rather engages in crime at many different levels and in many different fields.

In addition to the structural change, Dichter said that the police and the ministry were working to push forward legislation and technologies that would improve the level of SIGINT – “signals intelligence” – within the police. Currently, the police are reliant on the Shin Bet Security Agency to carry out even the most basic of services, such as placing traces on a single cell phone user.

“The Israel Police must build our version of 8200,” Dichter said, referring to the IDF’s elite intelligence unit. Police and ministry officials, he added, have recently completed the SIGINT multi-year development plan and key legislation on the subject has recently passed its first reading.

Beyond the war on organized crime, the plan for the Israel Police in 2008 calls for further steps in increasing police presence, including a proposal brought to the government to add an additional 1,000 open slots to this year’s planned enlistment. The plan is currently pending approval by the prime minister and the Finance Ministry, but should it go into effect, it will put more police officers on the street in traffic, investigative and patrol positions as well as in minority communities.

Israel’s current ratio of police officers to citizens is among the lowest among developed nations, and it is considered to be partially to blame for the country’s crime rates.

Another change currently in pilot testing is the use of video conferencing to allow prisoners to “attend” hearings without leaving their prisons. Although opposed by many attorneys, the pilot is currently in trial phase at the Abu Kabir Detention Facility, where prisoners may choose to participate in the program rather than physically attend remand extension hearings.

According to Dichter, the program – even if the pilot is initiated nationwide – will only be utilized when prisoners agree to the remote hearing. The minister pointed out that the idea held many advantages for prisoners – including avoiding the media exposure during the “walk of shame” from the police transport to the courtroom, during which prisoners frequently attempt to hide their faces by pulling up their shirts or wearing hooded tops. In addition, prisoners are saved the day-long procedure of searches and waiting for hearing times, which often begins before dawn and ends in the evening.

The advantage to the law enforcement community would be a reduction in the extremely high number (1200) of prisoners transported on Israel’s roadways every day. Each transport is considered by experts to increase the potential for prisoner escape.

Israel Police to emulate FBI in mafia crackdown – Rebecca Anna Stoil , THE JERUSALEM POST – Nov. 20, 2007 – http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1195546682531&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Ron Gonen, who has spent the past 18 years in the US Witness Protection Program, has teamed up with author Dave Copeland to offer an insider’s glance into a parallel universe of crime, murder and deceit.

Ron Gonen. Photo: Courtesy

Gonen, who spoke with The Jerusalem Post from an undisclosed location, says he was kicked out of the program earlier this month because he violated the terms of his agreement by co-authoring the book. Undeterred, the Russian-born former drug dealer and burglar said that he is writing a second work – his memoirs – in Hebrew. He hopes that this book will lead to a movie deal.

After Gonen and his wife Honey published an advertisement on Craig’s List in November 2004 seeking a writer to put his story into print, Copeland and Gonen began a collaboration that lasted more than two years and produced Blood and Volume, set to come out next week.

Copeland, who has never been to Israel, said that the book has earned attention prior to its release. “The pre-orders have been pretty good, 80% of first printing has already been sold,” he said.

But the book may cost Gonen more than he banked on. Beyond the risk of angering his old enemies, Gonen may soon find himself a persona non grata in the US.

According to Copeland, Gonen was given a permit that allowed him to work in the US as part of the Witness Protection Program, but the card is set to expire in May. Now, Gonen’s work permit may not be renewed and he could be deported to Israel.

Although the book mostly concerns New York in the eighties, Gonen’s story actually begins in the Soviet Union, four decades earlier, where his grandfather was in the black market. As a young child during the Stalinist period, Gonen says, he “grew up with the knowledge that the knock on the door could be a very serious knock.”

When he was nine, Gonen’s family moved to Israel. They were settled by the government in Beersheba, but later relocated to Holon. Eventually, he was sent to Kibbutz Ein Shemer.

But Gonen says that he was expelled after two years for breaking into the kibbutz’s storehouses and stealing clothing, which he distributed to his bunkmates.

Sandro De Bernardin, Italy’s ambassador to Israel, said comments such as those of retired Israeli judge Vardi Zeiler ignored crime-fighting campaigns in the island region.

‘I do not deny that in the past there was organised crime in Sicily. But I was not pleased with the statement that organised crime still controls the district police and the government institutions there,’ De Bernardin was quoted as saying by Israel’s top-selling newspaper, Yedioth Ahronoth, on Tuesday.

‘That is a lie and a falsehood. It is foolish to say so. Italian policemen lost their lives in the fight against crime in Sicily. To say that the Sicilian police are controlled by crime organisations is simply unfair,’ the ambassador said.

Italy has scored major successes in the fight against the Mafia since the killing of two anti-Mafia judges in 1992. Top bosses Salvatore ‘the beast’ Riina and Bernardo ‘the tractor’ Provenzano were arrested in 1993 and 2006 respectively.

But investigators say Cosa Nostra, as the Sicilian Mafia calls itself, is still a major problem on the island. It makes most of its money through extortion rackets and trying to win public works contracts for companies it controls.

REUTERS 5:56 a.m. February 27, 2007 Find this article at: http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/world/20070227-0556-israel-italy-.html

On Sunday, commission chairman Vardi Zeiler, a retired judge, said the police commander, Moshe Karadi, should be fired for the incomplete investigation of the murder and for ignoring ties between senior police officers and top organized crime figures. Karadi was not police commissioner at the time of the killing, but a departmental head.

The commission was formed to examine whether police properly closed the case of the murder, in which a rogue police officer confessed to shooting a suspected crime boss hospitalized under police guard after an assassination attempt.

The officer, who said he operated at the behest of a well-known Israeli crime family, was later murdered in Mexico, allegedly by members of the crime family angered by his confession. The case was later closed after police concluded there was not enough evidence.

Zeiler warned that elements of the corruption case showed symptoms of organized crime entering Israel’s police force, though he noted the charges had to be proved.

Karadi insisted that the allegations against him were untrue, but said he was resigning to “set a personal example” and spare the police the harm of a scandal.

Karadi was a top official in southern Israel at the time of the 1999 killing, and the commission rebuked him for promoting a police commander suspected in hushing up the case on behalf of the crime family that allegedly hired the murdered officer.

Just two hours after Karadi resigned, Public Security Minister Avi Dichter announced that the new police commander would be Yaakov Ganot, commander of the prisons service.

One panel of such judges will hold sessions regarding these cases on a daily basis, in order to finish them as quickly as possible, during the pilot phase of the program.

(IsraelNN.com) 00:18 Feb 12, ’07 http://www.israelnationalnews.com/news.php3?id=121385

Speaking to the Knesset plenum, Dichter added that the police are treating this initiative as part of a broader effort to stop organized crime’s takeover of legitimate activities.

According to Dichter, the complexity of the phenomenon requires an integrated inter-establishment effort, in order to deal with the issue in a thorough and efficient manner. This, said Dichter, also requires time.

Dichter stressed that the investigation is being conducted by Tel Aviv District Police and while no arrests have been made so far, some are expected in the future.

“The activities of organized crime and the takeover of the bottle recycling branch is part of an ongoing trend in recent years of infiltration and takeover of legitimate departments by organized crime, as part of the effort to launder money and increase income by these organizations,” said Dichter.

Dichter said the takeover is usually conducted through threats, extortion, and severe violence, which is often accompanied by the use of firearms. According to Dichter, this is part of the power struggle between the groups themselves.

The primary motive for organized crime to dominate bottle recycling is monetary profit, as well as the potential to take advantage of the branch for money laundering. Dichter stressed that the criminals involved come from all echelons of crime, including national and local crime organizations, as well as independent criminals.

By Gideon Alon, Haaretz, http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/811599.html