Prosecutors lodge charges against Taiba family mob

Police show off haul of luxury cars, trucks and bulldozers, and close a hardware store the family used to launder money.

By BEN HARTMAN
Police raid crime family 370 (photo credit: Screenshot)
Police raid crime family 370
(photo credit: Screenshot)
State prosecutors from the Central District indicted 14 members of the Abdel-Kader crime family on a series of organized crime charges, including membership in a criminal organization, extortion, money laundering, and other serious crimes.
Those charged include the alleged head of the crime family, 59-year-old Mabruk Abdel-Kader, and two of his sons, Warabi and Adi, 29 and 27, considered senior officers in the organization.
The indictment also includes Abed Haj Yihyeh, a Taiba lawyer who worked in the employ of the gang, giving them legal counsel and allegedly brokering loan sharking and property takeovers for the gang.
The indictment gives a lengthy breakdown of how the organization has operated during the last three decades that it allegedly ruled the central Israel city of Taiba, and made inroads into the underworld across central Israel.
While the indictment doesn’t include any murder charges, it does say that since a blood feud began between the Abdel-Kader and al-Hariri crime gangs, more than 50 people have been killed on both sides.
The indictment speaks about how the family ran “war rooms” in their family compound, with banks of plasma screens hooked up to surveillance cameras they put around the complex and across the city of Taiba. Some of those cameras were permanently affixed on the Taiba police station, so that they could know of potential raids ahead of time, and to keep tabs on any local residents going to police to testify, the indictment alleges.
In addition, the indictment says the family exploited people in difficult economic straits, giving them extremely high interest loans and using their loan-sharking to take control of local businesses and property, earning them millions.
The indictment also states that throughout their years of operation, the family has used intimidation and the strength of its reputation to terrorize local residents into doing their bidding.
The organized crime charges against the family include some of the most serious in the penal code.
Speaking to The Jerusalem Post on Sunday, one of the lawyers for the family dismissed the charges and said they have no intention of agreeing to a plea bargain and will fight every charge against them.