NEW YORK
The United States Attorney’s Office, Southern District of New York
Goal of the Alleged Scheme Was to Obtain a Religious Divorce for the Victim’s Wife
Preet Bharara, United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, William F. Sweeney Jr., the Assistant Director-in-Charge of the New York Field Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”), and William J. Bratton, Commissioner of the New York City Police Department (“NYPD”), announced the filing of a federal criminal complaint charging SHIMEN LIEBOWITZ and AHARON GOLDBERG with conspiring to kidnap and murder an individual in order to obtain a religious divorce for that individual’s wife. LIEBOWITZ and GOLDBERG were arrested yesterday in Central Valley, New York, while meeting to plan the kidnapping and murder. They will be presented later today before Magistrate Judge Debra Freeman in federal court in Manhattan.
Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said: “The defendants are charged with a chilling plot to kidnap and murder the intended victim. Over a period of months, the Complaint alleges, they met repeatedly to plan the kidnapping and to pay more than $55,000 to an individual they believed would carry it out. Thanks to the exemplary work of our partners at the FBI and NYPD, Liebowitz and Goldberg are now in custody.”
FBI Assistant Director-in-Charge William F. Sweeney Jr. said: “As if the plan to kidnap the victim and force him to divorce his wife in this alleged conspiracy wasn’t bad enough, the plotters allegedly decided halfway through the arrangement to go a step further and add murder to the list of their planned crimes. Our country protects freedom of religious beliefs and practices, but no one is allowed to plot a kidnapping and murder regardless of their motivation.”
According to the allegations in the Complaint unsealed today in Manhattan federal court:[1]
According to Jewish religious law as observed in certain communities, in order to effect a divorce, a husband must provide his wife with a document known as a “get.” A woman whose husband will not consent to a divorce is known as an “agunah.” In the absence of the husband’s issuing a get, an agunah may be released from her marriage only through the husband’s death.
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