2 Shluchim on Terror Target

By COLlive reporter

A week after a plan to attack the high-profile Chabad House in Bangkok was averted, a report claims that another planned attack had 2 Chabad rabbis as their prime target.

The Azerbaijan Ministry of National Security said it arrested a terror cell last week in the Muslim country which borders Eastern Europe and Iran which planned to “kill public activists.”

The ministry said that the three men, named Rasim Aliyev, Ali Huseynov and Balaqardash Dadashov, received smuggled arms and equipment from Iranian agents, Haaretz.com reported.

The activists they were planning to attack were Chief Rabbi of Azerbaijan Shneor Segal and Rabbi Mati Lewis, both Israeli-born Chabad Shluchim who lead the Jewish community in Baku and the Ohr Avner Chabad Jewish Day School.

The day school was inaugurated last year in a public ceremony attended by the Azeri President Ilham Aliyev, philanthropist Lev Leviev, Israel’s Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar and Russia’s Chief Rabbi Berel Lazar.

An Azeri commentator considered close to President Aliyev has launched a scathing indictment of Iran, Haaretz reporter Eli Shvidler said.

Irani-Azeri relations, which were never rosy, recently deteriorated even further after Azeri Communication Minister Ali Abbasov accused Iran of carrying out a cyber attack against several offices in the country accused of “cooperation with Israel.”

Rabbi Segal said he was not made aware of the threat.

“The Azeri security forces acted covertly without alerting us,” he told Haaretz.

“It was published that they originally planned to attack ‘people who look Jewish and hold foreign passports,’ near the school, but when the school guards began suspecting them, they started monitoring the area where I live.”