For Hire: Elite Israeli Squad To Break You
Out Of Jail By
Harry de Quetteville in Jerusalem The Telegraph - UK 8-6-5
- You won't find them listed in any telephone book. But
if you're locked up in a Third World jail, seemingly beyond help, the
secret team of Israeli soldiers-of-fortune can spring you from your
cramped and fetid cell - for a price.
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- With an armoury ranging from spiked drinks and
disguises to fake passports, honeytraps and sheer brute force, the
seven-strong squad of former special forces troops will launch freelance
jail-breaks across the developing world. Assuming you can find them,
they charge up to $150,000 (£85,000) to get their prize safely
home.
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- Although they might sound like a team dreamt up by a
Hollywood screenwriter, their existence was confirmed to The Sunday
Telegraph this week by lawyers - and by Dafna Margolin, a 46-year-old
from Tel Aviv, who was smuggled out of Cuba by the team four years
ago.
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- "We have rescued eight people so far," said the
commander of the group, who insisted on remaining anonymous. "Our price
is anything from $50,000 to $150,000."
-
- From India to Cuba and Mexico, the team specialises in
rescuing Israeli prisoners from countries where lawyers say that
corruption can hamper chances of a fair trial and prison conditions can
be horrendous.
-
- "We have rules," said the commander. "We only work in
developing countries and we can choose the cases that we accept. We
don't want heavy drug smuggling cases - we try not to take them."
-
- Yet he also admitted: "We don't really ask questions.
It's the job we have and we do it."
-
- The unit has broken its self-imposed rule only once,
when a cousin of one of its members was locked up in Norway. Then, its
leader says, it had few scruples about storming into one of the world's
most prosperous and crime-free nations.
-
- "Norway was an exception," said the unit commander.
"It was family, so we had to do it."
-
- Those familiar with the unit say that it is called
Pidyon Shevuyim, or Redemption of the Captive, after an ancient Jewish
law that calls on Jews to free their fellows from captivity as a
duty.
-
- While the team may be rooted in tradition, its methods
and equipment come straight from today's covert operations
battlefield.
-
- The core group of the seven met in the army, but
others have been recruited in recent years. The team members are aged
between their late twenties and early forties.
-
- "These are mostly special forces guys and they think
life is the army. It's what they know, so they continue to use these
Mossad-type tactics," said an associate, referring to Israel's foreign
intelligence service, involved in countless exploits on foreign soil,
including rescues and assassinations.
-
- "For most cases we spend between two and six months on
reconnaissance and preparation," said the unit commander. "We work on
two or three at a time and then take time off, sometimes a year, as a
'cool-down' period."
-
- The team is reluctant to divulge details about how it
frees its clients, from whom it demands a vow of silence over the
specifics of the escape. Those who know their techniques, however, say
that the mission is often launched as a prisoner is being moved from
place to place.
-
- "One tactic is for the prisoner to fake illness and
get moved to a hospital wing, or a clinic, which is less secure," said
the associate. "The unit forces the vehicle transporting the prisoner to
stop and snatches the inmate.
-
- "Or it uses sedatives to drug police watching the
inmates at the hospital, or even girls to fool around with the
guards."
-
- The team usually acquires its weapons locally and uses
fake passports to get its clients out of the country.
-
- Ms Margolin was smuggled out of Cuba in early 2001
after disaster struck on a week-long holiday in Havana.
-
- In October 2000, she had been involved in a traffic
accident in eastern Cuba in which the pillion passenger on a motorcycle
died. She insists that the motorcycle swerved in front of her car and
that the only witness supported her version of events, only to testify
against her later in court.
-
- "The trial was a terrible ordeal. There were hundreds
of people outside and I thought I would be lynched," she said this week.
"The prosecutor asked for a five-year suspended sentence, which meant I
would have been deported, but the judge gave me three years in jail with
hard labour."
-
- Back in Israel, a member of Ms Margolin's family
managed to contact Pidyon Shevuyim. Two weeks before her appeal to the
supreme court and the likely start of her sentence, Ms Margolin said,
the team landed in Cuba.
-
- "They sent three guys for reconnaissance, following
me, tracking my movements, then four days before I was to be locked up,
they took me outside Havana and one of the men changed my looks.
-
- "I was very scared. They told me that sometimes they
have to sedate some of their clients because they are so nervous. Only
on the escape plane I felt really free. But in three days I was back in
Israel."
-
- Ms Margolin said: "I think it's a humanitarian thing
to spread the word about these guys. People in my situation need help
and these guys can help."
-
- Israel's ministry of foreign affairs however, has a
less charitable view of the unit's activities. "We demand that Israelis
abroad show the same high respect for the local laws as we expect of
foreigners here," said Mark Regev, a spokesman. "We do not support any
illegal activity abroad and I think you can say that includes breaking
into foreign jails."
-
- Some lawyers in Israel, however, say that the ministry
has indirectly encouraged the rescue unit through its failure to offer
robust support to Israelis in trouble abroad.
-
- "The foreign ministry thinks that if it exerts any
influence for an Israeli in India say, then India might have some
comeback in Israel," said Mordechai Tsivin, a lawyer who deals with many
of the estimated 560 Israelis held in foreign jails.
-
- "It doesn't give any help to Israeli prisoners or
their families - zero. While you can't forgive the criminal activities
of this group, it has been encouraged to exist by the failures of the
state."
-
- Two families of Israelis serving time in foreign jails
supported his stance, telling The Sunday Telegraph that they had had
almost no help from the Israeli state in challenging what they claim are
unjust sentences.
-
- For the team commander, however, ethical niceties are
not a concern. What matters is that the money keeps flowing and the next
operations are successful.
-
- "We are in the planning stage for more jobs now," he
said. "So far they have all gone well but there are always risks
involved.
-
- "But we don't do it to feel good," he added. "We do it
because this is what we do best."
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- © Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2005.
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- http://telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/0
8/07/wjail07.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/08/07/ixworld.html
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