Three 18-year-old ultra-Orthodox men were arrested last Thursday at the airport in Sharm el-Sheikh on suspicion of trying to smuggle 80 military jackets to Sinai to sell to Bedouin instead.
Last Thursday, three young ultra-Orthodox were arrested at the airport in Sharm el-Sheikh on suspicion of trying to smuggle 80 military jackets into Sinai. They intended to sell the coats to the Bedouin for tens of thousands of shekels. According to the Mako report, they hid the coats in several suitcases.
Shimon Ifergan reports on the Mako website, another young woman who was with them was allowed to enter Sharm, but she returned to Israel on another flight for fear that she would also be arrested later. “He did not know that a military coat should not be smuggled into Sinai,” a friend of one of the detainees claimed in a conversation with Mako.
The investigation of the three will continue in the coming days and at the end it will be decided whether to extend their detention. An Israeli source who helps the three told Mako, “These are young guys whose language is to smuggle coats without knowing that they will be arrested.”
Apropos: In the last two days, the ISIS branch in Sinai has published photos from the “Eid al-Fitr atmosphere” in the huts https://t.co/PKwiWYfyxb pic.twitter.com/2sTa9vNyce
— roi kais • רועי קייס (@kaisos1987) May 7, 2022
As of Friday, the three, two of whom hold U.S. citizenship in addition to Israeli citizenship, have been transferred to the care of police and military authorities in Egypt, their cell phones have been taken, and they are being questioned by military intelligence personnel. Their friends have already asked the Israeli Foreign Ministry and the Egyptian consul in Eilat for help in releasing them, in addition to the American embassy, which is also trying to help.