Former Shin Bet chief formed team that kidnapped German heiress’s children — report

Then-Knesset member Yaakov Peri, a former head of the Shin Bet, at a meeting in the Knesset on January 15, 2018. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)
Then-Knesset member Yaakov Peri, a former head of the Shin Bet, at a meeting in the Knesset on January 15, 2018. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

Former Shin Bet chief Yaakov Peri assembled the team that carried out the orders of a German heiress to kidnap her children from their father’s house, with whom she was embroiled in a custody dispute, the BILD tabloid reports.

Christina Block, whose father founded Block House steakhouse restaurants, faces trial alongside her partner, the German television presenter Gerhard Delling, and a 35-year-old Israeli man, who allegedly took part in the kidnapping, among others.

At least eight people, most of them Israelis, took part in the kidnapping on New Year’s Eve 2023.

Block is alleged to have organized the abduction at the end of a long-running custody dispute with her ex-husband, with whom she has four children.

The husband is said to have kept the two youngest children with him after an agreed visit in 2021 to his home in southern Denmark, close to the German border.

AFP contributed to this report.

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