The Israel Supreme Court approved today a request for the release from prison of Nachman Shtarkes, grandfather of Yossele Schumacher. The ruling was handed down while the 10-year-old boy, found in Brooklyn Saturday night, was en route here by plane with his mother, Mrs. Ida Schumacher, and his 14-year-old sister, Zina.
The boy and his mother and sister were due at Lydda Airport this afternoon. They departed from New York’s International Airport early today aboard an EI AI Israel Airlines plane, after the mother had spent 36 hours in New York, where she formally identified him as her son and obtained his release from authorities of the U.S. Immigration Service.
The elderly Mr. Shtarkes had been in prison more than two years, after refusing to heed a court order to help Israel authorities to trace the child, kidnaped in 1959, when the grandparent refused to surrender him to the parents, Alter and Ida Schumacher. The grandfather had feared that the Schumachers would not give the boy an education of sufficient Orthodoxy. Originally arrested on the complaint of the Schumachers, the grandfather was ordered released on a petition filed by the Schumacher’s counsel.
It appeared unlikely however that Israeli authorities would abandon their efforts to obtain the extradition from Britain of the boy’s uncle, Shalom Shtarkes, who is under custody awaiting the outcome of extradition proceedings. Israel asked his extradition on charges of perjury and complicity in the abduction. Officials indicated also that they intended to press charges against others involved in the abduction and hiding of the boy since 1959.
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