Four senior executives of the popular ultra-Orthodox web portal Behadrey Haredim were arrested on Sunday over what could emerge as one of the ultra-Orthodox communitys most shocking scandals in recent history. According to reports, journalists allegedly blackmailed potential story subjects threatening to expose compromising information about them if they did not pay up. The Jerusalem Police central unit questioned the suspects for hours on suspicion of extortion. Rumors have circulated in the community for months about the sites methods of operation and many speculated it would not be long before the police became involved. On Sunday morning, detectives searched the portals offices at several branches, and took several people into custody at the Tel Aviv offices. A gag order has been imposed on details of the investigation. Police believe the investigation will turn up a large-scale affair, but they are wary of making public statements at this point. They did say, however, that additional arrests were expected in the near future. Despite the wave of rumors on Sunday, Behadrey Haredim employees insisted that they had no knowledge of any wrongdoing. One employee told Israel Hayom on Sunday: The website will continue to operate as usual. We are coming up to Passover and there are a lot advertisements and a whole lot of content to upload. We have no idea what this is all about we are getting our information from the media. Behadrey Haredim started out in 2002 as an ultra-Orthodox Internet forum on the Israeli forum portal Hyde Park. Over the years it gained readership and was eventually acquired by the Global Networks group, headed by Guy Cohen, who also serves as CEO of the website. The portal has become one of the two leading news sources for the ultra-Orthodox sector. The website is credited with having broken a number of news stories relevant to the haredi community, including the infamous Taliban mother case of a woman in Beit Shemesh who was suspected of severely abusing her 12 children. Following the report on Behadrey Haredim, the woman was convicted in April 2008. Despite the web portals success, the enterprise faced bankruptcy some three years ago when several respected haredi rabbis issued a call to boycott haredi websites, specifically naming Behadrey Haredim. The boycott lasted a short time and ultimately fizzled, mainly due to the fact that the ultra-Orthodox community never stopped using the portal.
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Blackmail, extortion and threats: all in a day's work for haredi portal
Reporters at ultra-Orthodox web portal Behadrey Haredim suspected of extorting hush-money from subjects of their journalistic investigations • Police believe investigation could expose one of the worst scandals in the ultra-Orthodox communitys history.