4 indicted for extorting business owner via security company, vandalizing his workplace

Four men from northern Israel accused of extorting a business owner through a private security company were indicted today, the State Attorney’s Office announces.

According to the indictment filed in the Haifa District Court, the defendants were involved in a protection racket and vandalism attack on a sewage pumping station after the contractor responsible for the facility cut ties with Ayalon Security Services Ltd.

The security company is owned by one of the defendants, 24-year-old Reda Rahal, from the Arab village of Rumat al-Heib. In the two years leading up to the break-in, the extorted contractor had been paying Rahal’s business a monthly fee for so-called security services.

After the contractor broke off contact, at least one of the defendants, Tamra resident Odai Idris, allegedly broke into the construction site and caused extensive damage costing nearly NIS 1.5 million ($484,000).

Fearing further reprisal, the contractor began paying the company under duress in September last year. He was extorted out of an additional NIS 50,000 ($16,000), paid in monthly installments. “No security services were actually provided” during this period, prosecutors write.

The protection money was allegedly divided among the defendants until they were finally arrested last month. The other two suspects, Tamra residents Walid Abu al-Hija and Mohammad Hassan, are implicated in the protection racket but not the break-in.

Prosecutors charge Idris with an additional offense for his alleged attempt to extort a grocery store chain owner in northern Israel. When the shop owner refused to pay protection money, the defendant turned to violent means. Assailants shot on five occasions at different branches of the franchise and threw a grenade at the home of the owner’s brother, prosecutors say.

The past two months have seen some Arab business owners attempt to push back against the phenomenon of protection racketeering, and violent crime as a whole, in the form of general strikes. Last month, the owner of a supermarket chain in Sakhnin sparked a nationwide strike in Arab society after shutting down his stores, following a shooting at one of its branches.

The indictment comes as near-daily homicides continue to plague Arab society. Much of the violence seen in recent years has been spurred on by organized crime, in which protection rackets play a major part.