Police rescue kidnapping victim after car chase through south

Police managed to rescue a kidnapping victim and arrest five suspects involved in the crime at the end of a car chase in the south on Monday.

The victim, a 22-year-old man from East Jerusalem, was found bound after he had been held and beaten in an apparent attempt to obtain a ransom from his family, police said following an initial investigation.

Police launched a search for the man after receiving a report of the kidnapping Sunday night. They initially focused their search around Eilat, and managed to locate a vehicle believed to be carrying the kidnapped man near the Bedouin town of Abu Talul in the Negev Desert.

Police set up roadblocks to stop the vehicle thought to be holding the man as well as another vehicle involved. The operation led to a car chase on dirt roads near an area with unrecognized Bedouin villages in the south.

Officers eventually managed to stop the two vehicles, including one which overturned, and free the man, police said. Two police officers were lightly hurt when the alleged kidnappers crashed into their vehicle.

“As soon as we received the report [about the kidnapping], we began expansive investigative activity in the Eilat region,” said Moshe Karadi, deputy commander of the Eilat region police department. Karadi said his officers worked quickly to locate and rescue the victim, and “the investigation into the incident is currently in progress.”

Earlier this month, a 16-year-old resident of Afula was freed by special police forces a day after being kidnapped by criminals who demanded a ransom for his release.

The youth, apparently a member of a gang, had been abducted by members of a rival group and was being held in the Arab town of Jaljulia. Special forces from the police Yamam counterterror unit raided the compound where he was being held and freed him. Police arrested eight suspects at the scene.