Is the Israeli New York gang settling scores in Bat Yam?

A man suspected of hiring a hit team that carried out a series of murders and attempted murders in recent years was arrested last week.

Police suspect that most of the murders and attempted murders were connected to a dispute that erupted when the suspect, Eitan Haya, 55, belonged to an Israeli crime ring in New York City in the 1980s. In recent years, a number of members of both Haya's gang and a rival gang have returned to Israel after serving long prison terms in the United States, mainly for drug offenses.

The State Prosecutor's Office will file an indictment in the Tel Aviv District Court today against three men suspected of being sent by Haya to carry out revenge killings in Tel Aviv. Haya will be brought to court today for an extension of his remand. Police are trying to link him to two murders and an attempted murder of former gang members who have returned to Israel.

Some of these gang members allegedly assisted the prosecution in cases involving other gang members in exchange for lighter sentences. Police suspect that their return to Israel sparked off a series of revenge killings against them in Tel Aviv.

Past grievances between the New York gangs are believed to be behind the murder of Nelo Hershko, who was killed while sitting in his house in Bat Yam two years ago. The murder of Ron Fredi-Efraim in broad daylight in south Tel Aviv four months ago is thought to be linked to the same dispute. In both cases, police suspect that the murderer was sent by Haya.

The official inquiry began in April this year, almost by chance, when a patrol policeman saw two men hastily throw away a bag in a Ramat Gan street after they noticed him. The two, Sergei Teplitzky and Iliya Khodonov, were arrested, and two revolvers and a silencer were found in the bag. The two suspects, both former combat soldiers, had no criminal record and had worked as bodyguards for ministers and Knesset members.

Teplitzky cooperated with the police and told them that he and Khodonov had been on their way to murder one Itzik Cohen and had been sent to do so by Avi Stoar, who was working for Haya.

Teplitzky said Stoar told him that Cohen must be killed "because he had blood on his hands." But police suspect that Haya wanted to kill Cohen because the latter had an affair with Haya's girlfriend some ten years ago, when Haya was imprisoned in the U.S.

Teplitzky also confessed that he had been sent by Haya to shoot Rishon Letzion resident Yoav Sina in February. Sina was badly injured and left paralyzed in one leg. But Teplitzky shot the wrong man, who happened to have the same name as his target. The Sina who had belonged to the gang had returned to Israel about four years ago, after finishing his prison sentence in the U.S., but Teplitzky failed to find him.

According to Teplitzky, Stoar also told him that Stoar and Haya were involved in the murder of criminal Ran Ephraim, who had been shot two weeks earlier in Tel Aviv. Teplitzky said this incident was also connected to the dispute from his days in New York.

"In view of the material gathered in this probe, we arrested Haya as the man behind the incidents Teplitzky related. In addition, we're probing his connection to the murders of Hershko and Ephraim," a police officer said.