Shin Bet investigation determines 16 year old lied about being kidnapped by Arab assailants, sending police on frantic search.
By DANIEL K. EISENBUDSearch and Rescue Forces(photo credit: Courtesy)
After sending police on a wild goose chase last month, a Jerusalem teenager who claimed he had been abducted by Arabs was indicted on Wednesday for filing a false report.According to the indictment in the Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court, the unidentified 16-year-old told police that Arabs had forced him into a car while he was hitchhiking, although he claimed to have no knowledge of where he had been at the time.After abruptly ending the call, the teen called police again, beseeching them to find him and claiming his life was in imminent danger, the indictment stated.“Locate me quickly... please, I beg of you!” it quoted him as saying.When police called the number back, the indictment continued, the teen affected an Arab accent, saying, “We kidnapped him. We’ve got him. Your guy just died.”As a result, police and the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) launched a frantic search and rescue operation involving hundreds of officers, helicopters and road blocks.However, after triangulating the location of the emergency call, officers determined that the boy had been calling from his family’s Jerusalem apartment, the indictment said.The teen is being charged with multiple crimes, including obstruction of justice, providing false information, harassment and disturbing police. It remains unclear whether he will be charged as an adult.The false claim came a few months after the nation mourned the kidnapping and murder of yeshiva students Naftali Fraenkel, 16, Eyal Yifrah, 19, and Gil-Ad Sha’er, 16, who had been hitchhiking in Area C of the West Bank when Hamas operatives abducted them. A subsequent investigation into those abductions determined that one of the students had attempted to alert police via his cellphone. Thinking the call was a prank, the officer who took the call hung up.
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