A prominent Satmar Hasidic rabbi from Israel and one of his followers were arrested and charged in NY with plotting to kidnap and kill a man who refused to give his wife a religious divorce.
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Leibowitz and Goldberg were arrested Wednesday in Central Valley, New York, while meeting to plan the murder, according to prosecutors. Bharara said they planned to pay $55,000 to someone they thought would commit the murder.
The FBI learned of the alleged plot after Leibowitz and Goldberg asked a Jewish private investigator for help kidnapping an unidentified man who had refused to give his wife a “get”, or a religious divorce required by observant Jews. Prosecutors said the 25-year-old Liebowitz belongs to the Satmar community in Kiryas Joel, New York, while the 55-year-old Goldberg of Bnei Brak, Israel, is a prominent rabbi in Kiryas Joel.
Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said, “The defendants are charged with a chilling plot to kidnap and murder the intended victim”.
But the intended hatchet man – identified as a fellow Orthodox Jew who “works as a consultant and provides investigative services” – blew the whistle to the Federal Bureau of Investigation and secretly recorded Goldberg and Liebowitz conspiring with him, court papers say. As the plotting continued, the group decided they wanted the victim murdered as well, prosecutors allege. FBI Assistant Director-in-Charge William F. Sweeney Jr. said.
An Orthodox Jewish woman can not get a religious divorce unless her husband consents through a get, according to prosecutors. Rabbinical courts cannot force a man to give his wife a get but they can impose harsh punishments on men the judges determine are unjustly withholding a get and turning their wives into what is known in Judaism as agunot, or “chained women”.
A complaint filed in Manhattan federal court quotes Liebowitz as saying the intended victim is a taxi driver who occasionally travels to Montreal and could “miss a night, or even two or three” before his family grew concerned.
Orthodox rabbis will not allow a chained woman remarry. In Israel, he said, husbands who refuse to grant divorces can be imprisoned.
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On or about August 9, 2016, the CS met with Liebowitz and Goldberg in Kiryas Joel, New York.
