LONDON — A court in Wales on Friday jailed three men for eight years for having kidnapped a Jewish-Israeli music producer “motivated by events taking place elsewhere in the world.”
Faiz Shah, 23, Mohammad Comrie, 23, and Elijah Ogunnubi-Sime, 20, tricked Itay Kashti into traveling hundreds of miles to west Wales, where they kidnapped him, handcuffing him to a radiator.
Kashti, in a victim impact statement, said the incident “felt like my own personal October 7,” referring to the 2023 Hamas-led terror onslaught in southern Israel that sparked the Gaza war.
The gang plotted the attack on a Telegram group chat and carried it out on August 26 last year.
Swansea Crown Court heard on Friday that the gang used false identities to rent out a remote cottage and arrange a taxi to pick up Kashti, who thought he was meeting people from a music production company.
They attacked the victim and taxi driver on arrival, but the taxi driver was able to escape and raise the alarm.
Police found the three men hiding in nearby fields and they pleaded guilty to charges of kidnap.
Three men have been sentenced to prison for the kidnapping of Israeli music producer Itay Kashti in a politically and religiously motivated attack. The perpetrators, Mohammad Comrie (23), Faiz Shah (23), and Elijah Ogunnubi-Sime (20), lured Kashti to a remote cottage in Wales… pic.twitter.com/md9qkG6wWW
— What’s Happening in The UK (@AcrossTheUK) March 14, 2025
Judge Catherine Richards jailed all three for eight years and one month. The attack, she said, was “motivated by events taking place elsewhere in the world.”
“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,” she added.
Describing his ordeal, Kashti said: “I was kicked to the head several times, handcuffed to a radiator and forced to lie down on the floor.
“I was threatened and told if I were to try and escape, I’d be killed,” he added.
Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.
It’s not (only) about you.
Supporting The Times of Israel isn’t a transaction for an online service, like subscribing to Netflix. The ToI Community is for people like you who care about a common good: ensuring that balanced, responsible coverage of Israel continues to be available to millions across the world, for free.
Sure, we’ll remove all ads from your page and you’ll unlock access to some excellent Community-only content. But your support gives you something more profound than that: the pride of joining something that really matters.
Join the Times of Israel Community
Join our Community
Already a member? Sign in to stop seeing this
You’re a dedicated reader
We’re really pleased that you’ve read X Times of Israel articles in the past month.
That’s why we started the Times of Israel – to provide discerning readers like you with must-read coverage of Israel and the Jewish world.
So now we have a request. Unlike other news outlets, we haven’t put up a paywall. But as the journalism we do is costly, we invite readers for whom The Times of Israel has become important to help support our work by joining The Times of Israel Community.
For as little as $6 a month you can help support our quality journalism while enjoying The Times of Israel AD-FREE, as well as accessing exclusive content available only to Times of Israel Community members.
Thank you,
David Horovitz, Founding Editor of The Times of Israel
Join Our Community
Join Our Community
Already a member? Sign in to stop seeing this
!function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s)
{if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function(){n.callMethod?
n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments)};
if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n;n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version=’2.0′;
n.queue=[];t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0;
t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0];
s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)}(window, document,’script’,
‘https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/fbevents.js’);
fbq(‘init’, ‘272776440645465’);
fbq(‘track’, ‘PageView’);
