Israel Police said Wednesday it detained Samir Bakri, the alleged head of the Bakri crime family, after a four-month search.
Police said in a statement that following a “complex” operation, police special forces raided a compound in the Bedouin town of Basmat Tab’un in the north and arrested Bakri after a brief foot chase along the town’s alleyways. As officers entered the compound where he had been hiding out, Bakri tried to flee along with another suspect, police said.
Bakri is suspected of involvement in murder, extortion, and other violent crimes. Bakri’s deputy, reportedly a resident of Nazareth, was also arrested. The second suspect was not named by police.
A Jeep vehicle was seized at the complex where Bakri was hiding. Police suspect it is the same vehicle that was used Tuesday in the fatal drive-by shooting of Abed al-Latif Zaytoon, the alleged “money man” for the rival Abu Latif crime family, according to Hebrew media reports.
An unnamed senior official in the police’s northern district told Channel 12 Wednesday that it was the apparent use of the vehicle in the Zaytoon’s killing, near the Meggido interchange on Tuesday, that led officers to finally track down Bakri.
“This hit and the use of the jeep led to their arrest,” the source said of Bakri and the second suspect. “He made one mistake too many. He slept every night in a different place; apartments to hide in Israel, in Nablus, and there was information that he also talked about [going to] the Gaza Strip.”
Samir Bakri during his arrest in Basmat Tab’un, August 30, 2023. (Israel Police)
Attorneys for Bakri said in a statement that they were not yet “aware of the suspicions against him” and would respond when they have more information on the matter, Ynet reported.
According to the Kan public broadcaster, Bakri, 32, is a resident of Nazareth and in recent years established a large crime organization involved in extortion, arms dealing, drugs, gambling, and hired killings. His crime empire turns over hundreds of millions of shekels a year, the broadcaster said.
A running feud between the Bakri and Hariri crime families is thought to have claimed dozens of lives, including the mass killing of five people at a car wash in Nazareth in June.
According to the Walla outlet, most of those killed were not actively involved in organized crime and were only targeted because of their familial ties to suspected gangsters.
National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, who has faced calls to resign over authorities’ handling of the wave of deadly crime in the Arab community, tweeted a photo of Bakri’s arrest and touted his election campaign vows to boost public safety.
“When I took office, I made the fight against organized crime my top goal, and that’s what I instructed the police to do,” said Ben Gvir, whose ministry oversees police.
“I only hope that the court will not release those criminals to the street again,” Ben Gvir wrote in reference to Bakri’s arrest earlier this year but subsequent release due to a lack of evidence to file charges. The minister’s comment was also a crack at the judicial system, which the hardline coalition is seeking to overhaul in a move Ben Gvir actively supports.
Barki’s arrest came as police are trying to crack down on a relentless crime wave in the Arab community that has seen homicides surge to record levels in 2023.
According to the Abraham Initiatives, an anti-violence advocacy group, Zaytoon was the 159th member of the Arab community to be violently killed in Israel since the start of the year, the vast majority of them in shootings. During the same period in 2022, 72 members of the community died in homicides.
The death toll for 2023 reached 160 on Wednesday when a man was shot dead on a street in the central city of Lod.
National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir at a police event in Jerusalem, August 17, 2023. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)
Citing estimates that police sources shared with a senior municipal official, Zman Israel, The Times of Israel’s Hebrew sister site, reported Tuesday that 35% of those killed this year are believed to be in crime groups, most of them low-ranking “soldiers.”
Another quarter of the victims are relatives of gangsters but have no involvement in crime themselves, with some believed to have been slain in retaliation killings by rival outfits.
The remaining 40% of the victims were estimated to have been killed for accumulating “gray market” debts, over local or business disputes that involved criminals, or for their political or communal activities that the gangs viewed as a threat. Others were simply caught in the crossfire.
These remaining homicides also include the killings of women and children by family members.
Most of the murders remain unsolved, with police lacking precise intelligence about motives. They do, however, usually know whether those killed were part of the underworld as a result of the force’s efforts to keep tabs on gangs and their members.
