Brooklyn Man Suspected In Planning Assassination Of Israeli Prime Minister.

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Israel was planning to deport to the US on Monday a haredi Jew from New York who was arrested last week, reportedly on suspicion that he intended to assassinate Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. His deportation had not been confirmed by press time.

Zalman Hatzkolevitch, 28, was detained by border police in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of Jerusalem near the Shimon Hatzadik Tomb at the behest of the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency), according to the Interior Ministry and Immigration Police.

The Bratslav hassid was reportedly carrying a Koran and pictures of himself wearing a keffiyeh while traveling in Arab countries.

The incident was the first time in memory that Israel would be deporting a Jew out of concern over possible security violations, according to Population Registry spokeswoman Sabine Haddad.

Rabbi Natan Arush, spiritual head of a Jerusalem-based Bratslav yeshiva, told The Jerusalem Post he knew Hatzkolevitch but rejected the accusations that he intended to assassinate the prime minister.

“He is a strange guy. He is very weird and may even be mentally ill,” Arush said. “He never spoke of the disengagement and he likes Arabs more than the ultra-Orthodox, whom he hates.”

Arush said Hatzkolevitch went through two divorces, the second of which “drove him crazy and pushed him over the edge.”

Arush confirmed police claims that Hatzkolevitch speaks Arabic and had visited Muslim countries including Iraq and Lebanon.

“He likes to travel around,” he said. “He speaks Arabic in addition to other languages. He knows Arabic well enough to even teach the Arabs.”

While Hatzkolevitch was not enrolled in his yeshiva, Arush said that as a Bratslav hassid he would wander around the building, and they would bump into one another at the graves of great rabbis.

“He likes to go to graves and he even sleeps there outside or nearby in his car,” he said.

he lives on my block