Yemenite rabbi and sect leader Uzi Meshulam was remanded in custody on Wednesday morning after a dawn raid on his fortress home the day before, in which one of his followers was shot and killed by Israeli police.
Some 250 police officers, including members of special crack units, were on hand around the court Wednesday as hundreds of Meshulam’s followers tried to follow their leader inside.
The siege of the Meshulam home, located in the development town of Yehud near Tel Aviv, ended early Wednesday morning when the remaining 26 people who had barricaded themselves inside surrendered. Among them were Meshulam’s wife, Elisheva, and their children.
The raid, which began before dawn on Tuesday, was intended to end a six-week standoff that began in late March. At that time, Knesset members promised Meshulam that there would be a parliamentary commission of inquiry into the fate of an undetermined number of Yemenite children who disappeared mysteriously shortly after arriving in Israel in 1949 and 1950.
The sect has charged that Israeli authorities kidnapped babies born to Yemenite mothers during that period and gave them to Jewish families of European descent.
Doctors who recall that period, when tens of thousands of Yemenites arrived in Israel, say the hospitals were ill equipped in the development towns to which the immigrants were assigned. Many children died and many others were taken into hospitals without being properly registered.
When the siege began Tuesday, one member of the sect, a 21-year-old settler from Elon Moreh in the West Bank, was shot dead by a police sniper who spotted him on a roof firing at a police helicopter and at the force below.
When police entered the Meshulam home, they found an arsenal of weapons that included cases of hand grenades, assault rifles, machine guns, and gas masks, as well as a supply of food and water to withstand a siege.
Police have treated the Meshulam sect with care, fearing a confrontation like the one last between the Branch Davidian sect and enforcement officials in Waco, Texas. That standoff ended in violence and the death of many members of the sect.
No one knows exactly how many followers Meshulam has, but there are certainly hundreds, and he appears to wield a very strong influence over them. Many are said to be known to the police and have close connections with violent and extremist nationalist groups.
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