Israeli police are bracing for an all-out mob war after a powerful car bomb killed the head of one of the country’s most powerful and prominent crime families on Monday.
Yakov Alperon, 54, died when the bomb ripped through the vehicle he was traveling in, on the corner of Yehuda Hamaccabi street and Namir road in north Tel Aviv, shortly before noon. Three bystanders were lightly wounded in the explosion.
He was killed as he was returning from the Tel Aviv Magistrate’s court, where an indictment had been filed against his son Dror, for blackmail and attacking a policeman.
Alperon had no shortage of enemies, including the man regarded as Israel’s most famous criminal, Zeev Rosenstein, who in 2006 was extradited to the US on drug charges, and the Abergil and Abutbul families, with whom the Alperon family had been engaged in a crime war.
Alperon also recently fell out with another mobster, Amir Mulner.
Alperon had in the past been the intended victim of many assassination attempts, including a grenade thrown at his house in 2001 and a car bomb two years later.
Four Belarusian citizens were indicted in 2004 for trying to kill him, and last year police defused a bomb found in the car of his son, Elad.
“The Alperon family members will find out where it [the bomb] came from, and then they’ll respond,” former Tel Aviv police chief David Tzur told the Ynet news site.
He believed there would not be an “immediate or instinctive response” to the bombing, since the family “is not like other crime organizations,” which usually hire hitmen “to do the job for them,” but “carries out its own conflicts.”
Israeli mob families have no scruples about settling scores in public, often wounding and even killing innocent bystanders in the process.
News of Alperon’s death dominated the news in Israel on Monday, with the country’s two commercial news channels devoting about half their hour-long bulletins to it.
PRECARIOUS RELATIONS: Commentators in Saudi Arabia accuse the UAE of growing too bold, backing forces at odds with Saudi interests in various conflicts A Saudi Arabian media campaign targeting the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has deepened the Gulf’s worst row in years, stoking fears of a damaging fall-out in the financial heart of the Middle East. Fiery accusations of rights abuses and betrayal have circulated for weeks in state-run and social media after a brief conflict in Yemen, where Saudi airstrikes quelled an offensive by UAE-backed separatists. The United Arab Emirates is “investing in chaos and supporting secessionists” from Libya to Yemen and the Horn of Africa, Saudi Arabia’s al-Ekhbariya TV charged in a report this week. Such invective has been unheard of
US President Donald Trump on Saturday warned Canada that if it concludes a trade deal with China, he would impose a 100 percent tariff on all goods coming over the border. Relations between the US and its northern neighbor have been rocky since Trump returned to the White House a year ago, with spats over trade and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney decrying a “rupture” in the US-led global order. During a visit to Beijing earlier this month, Carney hailed a “new strategic partnership” with China that resulted in a “preliminary, but landmark trade agreement” to reduce tariffs — but
Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) purge of his most senior general is driven by his effort to both secure “total control” of his military and root out corruption, US Ambassador to China David Perdue said told Bloomberg Television yesterday. The probe into Zhang Youxia (張又俠), Xi’s second-in-command, announced over the weekend, is a “major development,” Perdue said, citing the family connections the vice chair of China’s apex military commission has with Xi. Chinese authorities said Zhang was being investigated for suspected serious discipline and law violations, without disclosing further details. “I take him at his word that there’s a corruption effort under
China executed 11 people linked to Myanmar criminal gangs, including “key members” of telecom scam operations, state media reported yesterday, as Beijing toughens its response to the sprawling, transnational industry. Fraud compounds where scammers lure Internet users into fake romantic relationships and cryptocurrency investments have flourished across Southeast Asia, including in Myanmar. Initially largely targeting Chinese speakers, the criminal groups behind the compounds have expanded operations into multiple languages to steal from victims around the world. Those conducting the scams are sometimes willing con artists, and other times trafficked foreign nationals forced to work. In the past few years, Beijing has stepped up cooperation
RSS