WE WERE CAGED LIKE ANIMALS FOR 20 DAYS BY DSS~ ISRAELI FILMMAKERS

Thereportedly spent 20 days in detention without being charged to court by the Nigerian government.

 Three Israeli filmmakers arrested by the Department of State Services (DSS), Rochman Rudy, Noam Leibman and French-Israeli journalist, David Benaym have narrated the torture they experienced while in detention. 

The filmmakers reportedly spent 20 days in detention without being charged to court by the Nigerian government. 

A post attached to the video on Rudy’s instagram handle read, “’We were never lost’ team journeyed to Nigeria to film an episode of their documentary series exploring the stories, struggles and aspirations of the Igbo Jews, but while there, the team got abducted by the Nigerian government and were held in cages for weeks. 

“Here is the full account of what actually happened: ‘Our experience has only given us, even more, drive to uncover and share the stories of disconnected communities of Jews around the world.

“We experienced weeks of what Igbo Jews face every day and if our suffering has led to mainstream Jews waking up to the reality of their Igbo family, then we are proud of the sacrifice we had to pay.”

They continued, “The ‘we were never lost’ documentary series is a series that is set to tell the stories, struggles and aspirations of lesser-known or disconnected Jews in the world. 

“Our first season is to take place in Africa we were in Nigeria to film our first episode and unfortunately after two days, we were illegally held by the Nigerian government security service and we were in cages for three weeks. We’re here to set the records straight of what we went through and what actually happened.

“First, you may need a bit of context to understand who the Igbos are and why we went to Nigeria in the first place. The Igbo people are people with a rich history, diversity and a lot of cultures and have other similar experiences that other Jewish communities have around the world.

“Whether it is through persecution or overcoming challenges, they are believed to be descendants of the tribe of Israel specifically of Gad. There is a large community within the Igbo population that has either preserved elements of their Jewish culture, their Jewish heritage or has come back to their Jewish culture or heritage and some of them have their second generation born and all they know is being Jewish and we were coming to Nigeria to document specifically their stories, where they have come from, their experience, their history, aspirations, culture, do they want to remain in Nigeria? Do they want to come back to Israel?”

They shared a video of some Igbo Jews celebrating the Torah of Hashem. 

“Starting from the beginning, we arrived in Nigeria and spent the two days filming in a village called Ogidi, an amazing community that welcomed us with open arms, cooked us food and introduced us to their way of living their Jewish life, the way they were praying every single morning. 

“Even though we had only two days, we got to experience how charismatic, intelligent and hard-working and knowledgeable in Torah this community is. 

”At the end of our second video filming, we were notified that a video was going viral that they used images of us and we can see that they had completely fabricated the stories calling us MASSAD agents, associating us with a movement that is seeking to liberate Biafra and fight against the Nigerian government which of course we had nothing to do with.

“These bloggers had seen we were bringing Sefer Torah as a gift to the community and preceded to make a fake claim assuming we were connected to the separatist movement and that when the Torah arrives, it is a sign of the movement. This claim doesn’t even make sense because there are already several Sefer Torah’s throughout the region. 

“The DSS decided to get involved. The DSS is the interior defence of Nigeria. They came to our hotel on Friday morning with about 10 heavily armed men in black ski masks and told us we had to come with them, they took our phones, our passports and they took our freedom for the following 20 days.

“Of course, we were coming in with no bad intentions and we were innocent the entire time. We didn’t think much of it. We thought we would be there for about an hour, questions which showed them what we are about and what we were planning to do and we’d be able to continue with our project. 

“Eventually, they took us one on one and started interrogating us in ways that they were just accusing us, we had nothing to hide so we told them the truth and we told them our project had nothing to do with separatist movements. 

“It’s Friday night and we have realised at this point that we will not be able to get out and do Shabbath and everyone’s sleeping at the weekend so we did the Kiddush over a grape that we found and the multi over some crackers that we had and this is how we spent our first Shabbath in Nigeria.