[imagesource: YouTube / News24]

Bryanston is just a normal, relatively quiet middle-to-upper middle-class suburb in northern Johannesburg.

Except on Thursday morning when the streets turned into a crime scene as a multi-disciplinary team descended to arrest an alleged Israeli gang boss and seven others.

Israel’s “most wanted” gang leader has been on Interpol’s Red Notice since 2015, said police spokesperson Colonel Athlenda Mathe.

The suspect was finally arrested by Interpol South Africa, Organised Crime detectives, National Crime Intelligence, and the Special Task Force (STF).

A red notice is an international request for authorities to arrest a listed individual pending their extradition or surrender.

Image: Shiraaz Mohamed

The task team received a tip-off about the 46-year-old Israeli fugitive’s whereabouts and pounced, taking out three kilograms of drugs (suspected to be cocaine and crystal meth), 19 firearms including two AK47s, six motorbikes, a frequency jamming device, four drones fitted with cameras, two bulletproof vests, two money counting machines, a digital scale to weigh drugs, and GPS tracking devices, per IOL.

They also confiscated eight vehicles including a sniper light delivery truck along with $40 000 in cash:

That is quite the serious operation these suspected cronies had going:

#sapsHQ A multi-disciplinary team led by Interpol South Africa, Organised Crime, Detectives, Crime Intelligence and the Special Task Force (STF) have arrested Israeli’s most #wanted gang leader and seven others in Bryanston this morning. MLhttps://t.co/QGTsT0KaHC pic.twitter.com/04lceioJi8

— SA Police Service 🇿🇦 (@SAPoliceService) November 17, 2022

Another video reveals additional details:

Mathe said the suspected leader was “attached to a criminal organisation in Israel called the ‘Abergil Organisation’”, which commits various organised crimes extending from South Africa to Israel.

The alleged kingpin is wanted in Israel for conspiracy to commit murder and attempted murder, per The Daily Maverick:

“According to Israeli authorities, the suspect is part of a notorious gang dealing in drug trafficking, extortion and other criminal activities.”

He is also facing conspiracy and attempted murder charges related to two bomb blasts carried out in Israel in 2003 and 2004:

“In 2003 and 2004, this wanted suspect allegedly placed an explosive bomb underneath a vehicle of a man in Israel in two separate incidents. As a result of the first explosion, five people sustained serious injuries but all miraculously survived.

“In the second incident, the suspect also attempted to do the same with the same victim, where he placed a bomb on top of a vehicle. In this incident, three people also sustained serious injuries.”

Those double blasts are at the centre of the string of arrests carried out here in Bryanston, where all eight arrested suspects were discovered in the same house.

At some point, the suspects are expected to appear in the Randburg Magistrate’s Court.

[sources:iol&dailymaverick]