Jerusalem, Israel - Three children of the Jerusalem woman suspected of systematically starving her 3-year-old son were secretly smuggled to London on Wednesday. The boy at the center of the affair was not one of them, however.
The woman was arrested in August after police secretly videotaped her allegedly removing a feeding tube from her 3-year-old son's body, who was hospitalized suffering from severe malnutrition. The arrest of the mother, who belongs to the religious sect Toldot Aharon, sparked riots among Jerusalem's communities. The mother has been placed under house arrest.
After the children were revealed to have been smuggled abroad, the Jerusalem District prosecutor's office appealed to the court to limit the conditions of the mother's house arrest, fearing that she will attempt to escape to join her children.
The defendant, who coincidentally gave birth to another son on Thursday, is hospitalized in Shaare Zedek Hospital. The prosecution asked the court to instruct the hospital to provide constant updates regarding the mother's release date, to instruct the woman to give up her passport and to issue a stay of exit order for the child she allegedly starved.
The prosecution claims that the defendant violated the conditions of her house arrest on multiple occasions, when she prevented social workers from being present during the children's doctors' appointments. According to the prosecution, at other times the woman's children didn't show up to doctors' appointments that the court made, appointments that constituted conditions for returning the children to the custody of the mother.