ANT KATZ

Updated

Police then had to positively establish the identity of Rabbi Berland, which they reportedly did this afternoon.

Rabbi Berland has been on the run all over Africa and Europe for the past three years, much of it in South Africa, with the Israeli authorities after him for alleged sex offences which  his supporters and lawyers claimed to be “spurious” and result from words, rather than deeds, in that he was supposedly assisting women whose husbands refused to give them a get (Jewish divorce).

Berland has previously evaded three attempts by the Hawks to arrest him over the past two years, having been present initially at all three places. He dramatically escaped from SA to Holland after the second attempt to apprehend him and later disappeared from the Netherlands when an appeals court denied his attempt to overturn an earlier court-ordered extradition to Israel to answer to several “sex-pest” allegations.

BERLAND WAS SUPPOSED TO SURRENDER TO POLICE four weeks ago, which his lawyer subsequently renegotiated to Monday this week. But he was again a no-show. His lawyer had agreed that he hand himself over to elite police unit, The Hawks, who would verify his identity and hand him over to Interpol – who would in turn ensure that he be handed over to the Israeli police.

But the community was sceptical when Berland’s attorney and the National Prosecuting Authority said they had arranged that the rabbi-on-the-run would hand himself over.

READ MORE ON THE RECENT EVENTS HERE

After the Hawks’ second failed attempt to arrest Rabbi Berland, he escaped to Holland. When the Dutch rejected his appeal against their order to extradite him, he sneaked back into South Africa with a band of about 200 followers from his Shuvu Banim Breslov sect which operates out of a yeshiva in Jerusalem.

The number of followers grew and the Hawks and Interpol missed arresting him for a third time two months ago at a Midrand hotel.