Police arrest two suspects following two prison shootings within two days

By TAMARA ZIEVE

Published: NOVEMBER 24, 2018 21:36

Police briefing at the National Headquarters of the Israel Police (photo credit: ISRAEL POLICE) — Police briefing at the National Headquarters of the Israel Police

(photo credit: ISRAEL POLICE)

Odeh Cutier’s crime organization suspected of being behind the incidents.

Police arrested two suspects on Friday morning in connection with shooting incidents at two prisons earlier in the week.

The two suspects, 24 and 47, are from the Arab Israeli town of Jaljulya and are suspected of involvement in both incidents.

Overnight Thursday, in the second such incident in two days, shots were fired from a car at a guard tower at the Ayalon Prison in Ramle. No injuries were reported, but damage was caused to the guard tower, which was unmanned at the time of the shooting.

In the previous incident on Tuesday overnight, shots were fired at the Hadarim Prison in central Israel. In that incident, machine gun rounds were found at the scene but no injuries or damage were reported.

Police suspect that Odeh Cutier’s Jaljulya-based crime organization may be connect to the incidents. The background for the shooting may be the Israel Prison Service’s refusal to let

Cutier out of prison to attend his brother’s funeral, as well as a dispute between Cutier and a prison service official.

The shootings are the latest in a series of violent and criminal incidents directed at the prison service in recent months in a bid to intimidate prison officials, over the imprisonment and treatment of senior underworld crime figures in prison.

Cutier and 16 members of his organization have been charged with murder, attempted murder, kidnapping, extortion and other offenses in three different incidents.