Israel's Central District Court and the Rishon Lezion Magistrate's Court filed indictments on Tuesday against seven defendants for sexual offenses committed against an undercover police agent who posed online as a 12-year-old girl.
The indictments, which were filed by attorneys Meital Ilan and Ofir Efrati, include: attempted rape of a minor under the age of 14, attempted indecent act on a minor under the age of 14, attempted sexual harassment of a minor under the age of 15 and attempted extortion.
As part of the operation, a police agent working out of an apartment in the Shfela region, had the job of surfing the "Total Chat" website, a chat supervised by Walla, while pretending to be a 12-year-old girl named "Shir-12."
In the chatroom, the defendants, each according to their charges, all chatted with "Shir-12" and all had conversations of a sexual nature with her, either in the chat or later, on the private messaging app WhatsApp.
The undercover sting operation has so far resulted in a total of 28 indictments filed against 28 different defendants, according to a police statement.
The indictments filed in the district court were filed against Eliyahu Adi Abed, 59, Mordechai Alalo, 63, and another 51-year-old defendant whose name has not yet been approved for publication. In Rishon Lezion, indictments were filed against Khaled Wenny, 26, Matan Shauli Aricha, 26, Metsam Agmil, 35, and Rafael Shaar, 70.
According to the indictments, as part of the fight against the sexual abuse of minors on the Internet, Israel Police carried out an undercover operation in order to locate suspects who commit sexual offenses on minors online and offline.