Soldier investigated after making fake kidnapping call to police
Serviceman tells dispatchers he’s been abducted; forces trace the call and converge on a soldiers’ rooming house in Beersheba
Emanuel (Mannie) Fabian is The Times of Israel's military correspondent
A soldier is under investigation after placing a fake call to cops in which he claimed to have been kidnapped, police said Sunday.
In the phone call with police dispatch, the suspect was heard mumbling and saying, “We were kidnapped, we were kidnapped,” police said.
It was not immediately clear when the phone call was received.
Officers from the Beersheba police station sprang into action, launching an investigation and scanning the area from which the call had originated.
Officers eventually reached a rooming house for soldiers in Beersheba. The caller was revealed to be a soldier who had tried to prank police for reasons unknown. He was detained for questioning.
In 2015, two Israeli soldiers faked a kidnapping in the West Bank that sparked a massive military operation. The investigation into the hoax kidnapping found that one of the soldiers was trying to flee criminal underworld figures after running up tens of thousands of shekels in debt from illegal gambling.
They were convicted in a plea bargain and sentenced in Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court in June 2018.
Israel is on a heightened state of alert after a spate of terror attacks, including a deadly double bombing in Jerusalem that killed two and injured another 20, and a car-ramming in Beersheba that cause moderate injuries to an 18-year-old, both last week.
