Shin Bet Nabs ISIS Recruits

A group of six Israeli Arabs have been arrested by Shin Bet and the Israel Police for conspiring to travel to Syria to join Islamic State.

The six detainees, all of whom come from the small town of Jaljulya, were planning to make their way overland to Syria and by paraglider to Islamic State-held territory.

They were indicted on charges of contact with a foreign agent, conspiracy and attempted illegal crossing to an enemy state, it was cleared for publication on Wednesday.

Two of the men, who are brothers, Jihad Hagla, 26, and Ahab Hagla, 22, had helped another Jaljulya resident, Nadal Salah, paraglide into Syria from the Golan Heights on October 24. That same night, security forces apprehended the two, and under interrogation obtained information about the others in the cell.

The Shin Bet said both brothers were known to security services as being supporters of ISIS, and that Jihad had spent six months in Syria in 2013 with ISIS and other rebel groups.

The accomplices named by Jihad and Ahab included four other residents of Jaljulya, including Anas Nadal Yusef Hagla, 19, Muhammed Amin Uda, 28, Muhammed Zakagti, 22, and Adna Ismail Otman Aynash, 21.

In an unrelated security item, border police arrested a 16-year-old boy near Me’aras Hamachpelah on Wednesday morning in an attempted stabbing attack.

The suspect approached police with a knife in his hand. When he didn’t respond to orders to stop, they subdued him without incident, police said.

Also on Wednesday, 11-year-old terrorist Ali Alkam, who, along with his 14-year-old cousin Muawiyyeh Alkam stabbed and wounded a security guard on the Yerushalayim light rail last Tuesday, is receiving medical care and will soon be released — without standing trial, since he is under the age for sentencing. His father said that he was told by authorities that the boy will be sent to a special school, but not to prison.

This article appeared in print on page 7 of the November 19th, 2015 edition of Hamodia.