Gang sentenced for kidnapping of Itay Kashti

Faiz Shah, 23, Mohammad Comrie, 23, and Elijah Ogunnubi-Sime, 20, have been sentenced to eight years and one month in prison after pleading guilty to manipulating Itay Kashti, an Israeli Jew, into traveling hundreds of miles to Wales, where they kidnapped him, handcuffing him to a radiator and beating him.

Mr Kashti said that the incident “felt like my own personal October 7,” in reference to the Hamas massacre in Israel on 7th October 2023 and the terror group’s seizing of hostages, many of whom still remain in captivity in unspeakable conditions.

The gang was sentenced at Swansea Crown Court yesterday, when Judge Catherine Richards said that the kidnapping was “motivated by events taking place elsewhere in the world,” adding: “He was an entirely innocent, hard-working music producer that you had identified as a victim based on your understanding of his wealth and his Jewish heritage.”

A spokesperson for Campaign Against Antisemitism said: “This is an absolutely horrific crime. It is an enormous relief that Mr Kashti was able to escape, given that similar abductions of Jews from France to Gaza have ended in murder. This is what ‘globalising the Intifada’ looks like: Jews being subjected to violence motivated by religious hatred. We are grateful to the police in Wales and to the court for taking a stand. This sentence is a message both to prospective perpetrators of such heinous crimes and also to the authorities elsewhere in Britain, who have turned too much of a blind eye to incitement to violence against Jews.”