March 11, 2013

(JTA) — Moshe Areyh Friedman, an Orthodox Jew who has been shunned by Antwerp’s Jewish communities for his politics, has accused community leaders of covering up a murder.

Last week Friedman, a 40-year-old Brooklyn native, wrote to Belgian authorities and told local media that he had evidence concerning the unsolved murder of Moshe Yitzchak Naeh in 2004, which Freidman said should be re-opened.

Naeh, father of four was shot near his home in Antwerp while removing groceries from the trunk of his car.

The Belgian news site Het Nieuwsblad.be on March 6 quoted Friedman as saying: “One of the leaders of the community told me himself that that they eliminated Moishe. I will name names when the time is right, but now I am asking for police to re-open the case.”

In December, Friedman – an anti-Zionist who has been ostracized in his community and elsewhere for attending a conference of Holocaust-deniers in Iran in 2006, among other actions – secured an injunction forcing a haredi Orthodox school for girls to admit two of his boys. The injunction, which angered many Orthodox residents for interfering with the gender separation customary in that community, has since been lifted and is pending a review by welfare services. 

Friedman told Belgian media that “Moishe was taken out by a mafia network that belongs to the Jewish community of Antwerp. His killers were dangerous and rich people who launder money from trafficking drugs, blood diamonds and other criminal ventures.”

Moshe Yitzchak Naeh, Friedman says, “was involved in the money laundering but knew too much about all kinds of dirty business.” He added: “The Jewish Orthodox mafia has inroads with the authorities and has managed to stall the investigation of Moshe Yitzchak Naeh’s murder.”

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