Caption: Menashe Levy (right) back home in Israel together with Danny Grossman (Left), a coordinator for the Aleph Institute organization which provides support and assistance to prisoners. . (photo credit: JEREMY SHARON)
Dear Reader,
As you can imagine, more people are reading The Jerusalem Post than ever before.
Nevertheless, traditional business models are no longer sustainable and high-quality publications,
like ours, are being forced to look for new ways to keep going. Unlike many other news organizations,
we have not put up a paywall. We want to keep our journalism open
and accessible and be able to keep providing you with news
and analysis from the frontlines of Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish World.
As one of our loyal readers, we ask you to be our partner.
For $5 a month you will receive access to the following:
- A user experience almost completely free of ads
- Access to our Premium Section
- Content from the award-winning Jerusalem Report and our monthly magazine to learn Hebrew - Ivrit
- A brand new ePaper featuring the daily newspaper as it appears in print in Israel
Help us grow and continue telling Israel’s story to the world.
Thank you,
Ronit Hasin-Hochman, CEO, Jerusalem Post Group
Yaakov Katz, Editor-in-Chief
Israeli businessman Menashe Levy, whose company had been working in Ethiopia for years, but who was arrested and had been held in wretched conditions since 2015 on questionable charges, was finally released last month and returned to Israel on July 4.
In 2015, Levy endured a Kafka-esque criminal process and was imprisoned in abject conditions in the east African country, while the assets of his company vanished without trace. He had been caught in a legal morass seemingly without end, until his liberation on June 22.
Levy suffered mistreatment and violent assault during his incarceration without ever being convicted, before he finally regained his freedom thanks to the efforts of Aleph, a Jewish activist organization that supports prisoners, assisted by attorney and author Alan Dershowitz and, eventually, the prime minister of Israel.Levy began working in Ethiopia in 2009, building infrastructure and transport networks as he had previously done in Israel.
By 2015 his firm, Tidhar Excavation & Earth Moving Ltd., was employing some 6,500 workers in Ethiopia, building roads and other transport projects, with gross annual revenues in the millions of dollars.
One major project in which Levy’s company was involved was a road construction project in Ethiopia’s capital Addis Ababa, an undertaking begun in 2013 in collaboration with the China Communications Construction Company CCCC and the city's Roads Authority.
Suddenly, however, the General Audit office under the authority of the Ethiopian government – akin to a state comptroller –announced an investigation into Levy and Tidhar.
According to Levy, the investigator eventually conveyed to him that if he paid her a significant sum in bribes she would drop the investigation. But he refused, a decision he says landed him in prison.
He was charged with tax evasion to the tune of $2 million, hit with an additional $2 million fine, and also charged with laundering the money he withheld in taxes and with bribing tax officials.
Upon his arrest, Levy was taken to the Maekelawi detention center in Addis, which usually had been reserved for political prisoners and has been specifically cited by human rights groups for the abuse, beatings and torture that took place there. It was closed last year.
“This prison was simply awful,” Levy told The Jerusalem Post during an interview earlier this week. “The room I was in was the size of 10 mattresses. Thirty-five people were kept in this room with one small grate for air close to the ceiling. It was full of ticks, cockroaches, mosquitoes and insects of every kind, and I said to myself every night: ‘Please God let them take just half a liter [of blood] tonight.’”
Levy said that detainees had to be in this room from five o’clock in the afternoon to six o’clock in the morning, and that during the day, they were only allowed to go out into a small confined area akin to a corridor.
After 10 days of this living hell, Levy was transferred to the Kaliti federal prison, also in the capital, where conditions were somewhat better but nevertheless crammed and squalid.
He was placed in Zone 6 of the prison, which housed some 600 inmates in four large communal rooms. After four months, a prisoner of Sudanese nationality was brought in and given a bed close to Levy.
As it turned out, this individual had been arrested on an Ethiopian Airlines flight from Chad, during which he had physically beaten and attempted to choke and kill a Jewish Israeli passenger, shouting “Allah is great” and “kill the Jews” in Arabic.
The incident was widely reported in the media.
Shortly after arriving in Kaliti’s Zone 6, the same man targeted Levy.
“One day, I was playing backgammon in the courtyard, when out of nowhere this man comes with a two meter wooden beam and begins to beat me over the head,” said Levy. “I had no idea what happened; I thought I had been electrocuted or something."
The attack left Levy with brain trauma, hearing loss in one ear, and scars on his head that are still visible today.
He was transferred to a government hospital, which he described as “a torture chamber,” too filthy to serve as a medical facility, but he nevertheless survived the incident and was eventually transferred back to Kaliti.
He was, however, kept in the prison hospital away from other inmates because of the apparent danger to his life from them.
In the meantime, criminal proceedings against Levy were underway, but he and his lawyers were never presented with the evidence against him during the entire duration of his incarceration.
Levy said the investigators charged him with having evaded taxes on some $7 million of unreported income, but that he provided evidence, supported by CCCC and the Addis Ababa City Roads Authority, that his company had fully declared all income for the relevant years.
While the legal proceedings continued against Levy, three auditors who had been arrested and charged with accepting bribes from him were acquitted and released from prison two years after his own imprisonment, although Levy’s incarceration continued.
During his imprisonment, Levy’s adult daughter suffered a stroke, which caused her significant brain injury, but he was denied the right to conduct a video call with her by the prison authorities.
In 2018, after three years in prison, the judges presiding over the case were finally expected to give a ruling. But on the day of the judgement, they were removed from the case and replaced with new judges, who then needed to review the evidence afresh.
In the beginning of 2018, word of his plight reached the Aleph Institute.
Rabbi Zvi Boyarsky, who heads Aleph's advocacy efforts from his Los Angeles office, told the Post that the organization immediately began working on Levy’s case as soon as it became aware of his situation.
“We have provided support to thousands of families and their loved ones in prison, from all walks of life and ethnicities since Aleph was founded 39 years ago,” Boyarsky said. “Menashe suffered intensely in very difficult conditions and we had to help him.”
Aleph and its team, including leading LA attorney Gary Apfel, began to muster help from US politicians and businessman as well as Ethiopian and Israeli officials to try and bring an end to Levy’s ordeal.
Former director of the American Jewish Congress in Israel Danny Grossman, who serves as Aleph’s representative in Israel as well as Alan Dershowitz’s point of contact here, helped coordinate the sensitive efforts on behalf of Menashe at the highest levels in the US and Israel.
The organization worked with US Congressman Chris Smith, who helped open communications with Ethiopian officials through a well-connected Ethiopian doctor, as well as with officials in Ethiopia’s legal establishment.
Dershowitz, who has worked on numerous cases for Aleph, spoke with US Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Oklahoma) who began communications with the Ethiopian ambassador to the US, while various Israeli government officials, including Agriculture Minister Uri Ariel, also made efforts on their end to secure Levy’s release.
President Reuven Rivlin and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu raised his case with their counterparts in Ethiopia and progress was made. But when the ruling prime minister of Ethiopia Hailemariam Desalegn stepped down, the process had to be started from scratch in April with new prime minister Abiy Ahmed.
There was still no real end in sight for Levy, as contacts and communications dragged on without result, while the court still failed to rule on his case.
Then, earlier this year, Dershowitz met with Netanyahu and discussed Levy’s unfortunate story.
Netanyahu made a call to his Ethiopian counterpart Ahmed in June, and shortly thereafter, all of the criminal charges against Levy were dropped.
A settlement was arranged whereby a sum of some of approximately $345,000 was paid for “damages to the government," and Levy was eventually released from prison on June 22. He flew back to Israel on the Fourth of July.
Speaking to the Post, Dershowitz said he had immediately agreed to take on the case given the legal irregularities with Levy’s trial.
“It is unthinkable for a person to be held for such a long period of time for an economic crime where they do not pose a physical danger to society, without a formal conviction,” Dershowitz said.
He said that he believes there had been antisemitic motivations in Levy’s treatment, especially the way in which a dangerous prisoner with clearly antisemitic beliefs had been placed in close proximity to him, adding that Levy’s most basic human rights had been violated.
He declined, however, to offer an opinion as to whether or not any of the charges against Levy for tax evasion and money laundering had any basis, saying that since the alleged evidence against Levy was withheld, it was impossible to comment on this.
Levy himself denies all the charges, saying that he never offered bribes during his business dealings in Ethiopia.
“I always thought to myself in prison that maybe it would have been better for me to pay the bribe the General Audit investigator demanded, but I always came to the conclusion that it was better to have remained decent than to do this,” said Levy.
He gave thanks in particular to Aleph, noting that the organization had provided him with kosher food in prison, gave him emotional support by arranging frequent visits, coordinated the effort to get him released and “diligently took care of me the whole way.”
Levy also noted that Aleph has helped him since arriving back in Israel to rebuild his life.
Asked how he managed to survive his ordeal, he simply said that faith in God had helped him continue on, despite the fact that he is not strictly observant of religious law.
Levy also referenced the Biblical figure of Joseph who was unjustly imprisoned, saying that of all the Jewish people’s forefathers, Joseph had demonstrated the greatest faith in God despite the travails of his life.
“It was such a difficult time; I felt helpless and incapacitated," Levy said. "God helped me through: I believed in God. He was my comfort. I took it with love. I believed in God and my innocence. I always believed that I had done nothing and it was just a matter of time.”
Join Jerusalem Post Premium Plus now for just $5 and upgrade your experience with an ads-free website and exclusive content. Click here>>
https://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/The-story-of-an-Israeli-citizen-imprisoned-far-from-home-596790
2019-07-25 12:05:00Z
CAIiEMN673hQXeirqS49lC9O9ZgqGAgEKg8IACoHCAowr9eeCTDYlm4w44mLBg
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "Prison break: Israel rescues businessman from Ethiopian jail - The Jerusalem Post"
Post a Comment