A joint team of Interpol investigators and South African police arrested a man described as Israel's " most wanted gang leader" during an early morning raid on a private residence in the posh Bryanston neighborhood near Johannesburg.
Authorities said the house was surrounded by walls 13 feet high.
The suspect, who was not initially named, was later identified as 46-year-old notorious Israeli fugitive Yaniv Ben Simon, a close associate of the crime boss Yitzhak Abergil who is currently in prison.
South African police spokesperson Colonel Athlenda Mathe said, "He has been on Interpol’s Red Notice since 2015 and is wanted in Israel for conspiracy to commit murder and attempted murder.”
Ben Simon was arrested with seven other suspects in the operation conducted with the intelligence provided by Israeli police.
Simon, dubbed as the world's most wanted Israeli, is accused of taking part in two different incidents in 2003 and 2004 in which he allegedly attempted to kill rivals of the Abergil syndicate according to a report by The Times of Israel.
Israeli Police said Ben Simon was a suspect in the case called Case 512, a thorough investigation carried out by the Israel Police's anti-fraud Lahav 433 unit as part of an ongoing crackdown on organized crime in Israel.
Israeli authorities accuse the suspect of placing an explosive bomb underneath a vehicle of a man in Israel on two separate occasions. Five people sustained serious injuries as a result of the first explosion, but all survived.
Among the items discovered and seized by Police during the raid were 19 firearms including five assault rifles, seven handguns, about $40,000 (NIS 137,000), a signal jamming device, four drones fitted with cameras, six motorcycles, and eight motor vehicles. Police suspect that three of the motorcycles were stolen.
According to a police statement, one of the vehicles was a delivery truck with heavy sound insulation and a chair bolted to the floor which was designed to be used for torture. The vehicle had been adapted for use by a sniper, the statement noted.
Ben Simon is a member of the Abergil gang, which deals in drug trafficking and extortion. The Abergil crime family has long been regarded as a major force in Israel's criminal underworld.
Abergil himself was sentenced to three life terms and an additional 30 years in prison in June for the murder of three innocent bystanders during an attempted hit in 2003 because of his role as the leader of the organized crime cell that was responsible for the attack.
Judges ruled that he "initiated and planned the incident that would harm civilians." They also called it "a cruel, unbridled plan, no different from a terror attack."
An Israeli national with alleged ties to organized crime was shot and killed in Cape Town last month. According to early reports, he went to South Africa to try to get away from the gangland fighting in Israel.
Crime
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