Three Israeli filmmakers who were imprisoned in Nigeria for nearly three weeks landed back in Israel Thursday morning, after they were released two days earlier.
They had been arrested in a synagogue on July 9 by masked agents of Nigeria’s internal security agency, the Department of State Services, on suspicion of contact with Biafran separatists in the southeast of the country.
“I am very happy that Rudy, Andrew and David were freed from detention in Nigeria and returned to Israel this morning,” said Foreign Minister Yair Lapid in a statement released shortly after the three landed.
“My thanks to the staff of the Foreign Ministry, the Consular Department, and especially to the Nigerian authorities and the deputy ambassador in Nigeria, Yotam Kreiman, on their unceasing efforts to help secure their release,” he said.
Lapid stressed that Israel’s envoy had worked daily with the French and US embassies in the country on the issue, and noted that the local Chabad center provided the three men with kosher food.
One of the men entered Nigeria on a French passport, and the other two used their American passports.
Nigerian authorities released the trio from prison Tuesday evening and handed them over to US custody. American embassy staff then took them to the local Chabad center to spend the night.
The three were given their passports and phones just before their flight took off for Istanbul Wednesday night. Kreiman accompanied them from their release until they boarded their flight.
Rudy Rochman, a pro-Israel activist with almost 95,000 followers on Instagram, filmmaker Andrew Noam Leibman, and French-Israeli journalist Edouard David Benaym were in Nigeria to film “We Were Never Lost,” a documentary exploring Jewish communities in African countries such as Kenya, Madagascar, Uganda and Nigeria. They were focusing on the Igbo Jewish community in Nigeria.
The families of the three Israelis had said that local political elements had “twisted” the gifting of a Torah scroll to a local community to claim it constituted support for separatist political ambitions. The Torah scroll is currently with the local community.
The men landed in Nigeria on July 6. According to locals, the crew was detained at a synagogue during services in the Igbo village of Ogidi. The Igbo consider themselves a lost tribe of Israel. The filmmakers were aware of the political sensitivity surrounding the filming of the Igbo community, noting on their documentary’s Facebook page: “We do not take any position on political movements as we are not here as politicians nor as a part of any governmental delegations.”
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