Police continued their search today in Komemiut, an Agudat Israel settlement in the Negev, for nine-year-old Yossele Schumacher, who was hidden by his grandfather, Nachman Starkes, out of fear that the boy’s parents would not give him a sufficiently Orthodox upbringing. Among the homes searched in the settlement was that of the local rabbi, where the boy was believed to have been kept for some time.
The latest move by Israeli police in the case followed the rear rest yesterday of the aged Mr. Starkes, who was taken from his Jerusalem home back to the Ramleh jail after failing to find the boy during a three-month suspension of sentence given him to enable him to produce his grandson. The court had found that the grandfather had not made a genuine effort to locate Yossele. Mr. Starkes has already spent nearly a year in jail for his refusal to yield the boy.
In London, meanwhile, Scotland yard is keeping under surveillance Shalom Starkes, Yossele’s uncle, who is suspected of having taken the boy to England. London police said, however, that a check of the flight on which Shalom Starkes arrived in England revealed that no children were aboard.
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