Benjamin Bright-Fishbein, the American citizen who was kidnapped Saturday night in Nablus, was handed over to the Israel Defense Forces yesterday with the aid of the Palestinian security forces.
Bright-Fishbein, an American Jew who does not have Israeli citizenship, arrived in Nablus at around 3 P.M. on Saturday, apparently out of curiosity to see the town. He is a student at Brown University in Rhode Island and has spent the past few months in the Middle East. According to military sources, he crossed over at the Hawara roadblock, south of Nablus, but was not stopped by soldiers since they do not prevent foreign nationals from entering the territories unless they pose a security threat.
Bright-Fishbein told police he wandered around Nablus for a short while until he was accosted by an armed gang, belonging to Fatah's al-Aqsa Martyrs and Heroes Brigade in the casbah. They forced him to go with them and shot a video clip in which he appealed to Israel to release Palestinian prisoners; otherwise, he said, his life would be at risk.
Israeli security sources who heard a report of the kidnapping on Saturday evening, began investigating whether an Israeli citizen of that name existed and planning means of extricating him from the hands of his abductors. Late that evening, the video reached Reuters. Israeli investigators who saw it were suspicious: Bright-Fishbein was holding a Hebrew University student card but there were no abductors to be seen on the video.
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