Young Man Charged After Fatal Car Strike During Attempted Debt Kidnapping

Israel’s State Prosecutor filed a serious indictment on Friday in Haifa District Court against 22-year-old Adam Dragama of Kafr Manda. He is charged with murder under aggravated circumstances, attempted kidnapping for extortion, and destruction of evidence after, according to prosecutors, he and others tried to abduct 30-year-old Muhammad Faraj Taha and killed him by hitting him with a car.

The indictment, submitted by attorney Yaniv Zohar of the Haifa District Prosecutor’s Office, says the motive was a financial debt that Taha allegedly owed to unidentified people. Dragama and two others allegedly planned to kidnap him, threaten him, and use violence to force repayment.

To carry out the plan, they arranged to meet Taha in Kiryat Ata and arrived by car carrying clubs. When Taha saw the men getting out of the vehicle with the clubs, he ran away. Prosecutors say Dragama then accelerated toward him and struck him head-on to stop his escape and enable the kidnapping.

The impact threw Taha onto the hood and windshield, then toward a parked truck, leaving him critically wounded. Rescue teams pronounced him dead at the scene. The indictment also says Dragama and his accomplices fled without calling for help, and later Dragama abandoned the vehicle and destroyed his mobile phone. The prosecution asked the court to keep him in custody until the end of the proceedings.