One thousand members of Manchester’s Charedi community turned out on Monday for a prayer meeting on behalf of three strictly Orthodox young Israelis facing potential imprisonment in Japan for drug smuggling.
The men have been held since April 2008 when drugs were found concealed in historical artefacts in their baggage. Lawyers claimed they were conned into taking the items. Gateshead’s Rabbi Shraga Zimmerman urged the audience “to feel the pain, fear and suffering of others as your own.”