NEW YORK — An argument over a tunnel that was surreptitiously constructed under the side of a historic Brooklyn synagogue led to the arrest of a number of Hasidic Jewish worshippers.
The Chabad-Lubavitch international headquarters in Crown Heights discovered a tunnel, which prompted the city to order an emergency structural assessment on Tuesday. Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the founder of the organization, originally lived in the building at 770 Eastern Parkway, which welcomes hundreds of tourists every year.
A “group of extremist students” had surreptitiously torn through the walls of an empty building behind the headquarters, according to Motti Seligson, a Chabad spokesman, creating a subterranean route beneath a row of office buildings and lecture halls that eventually connected to the synagogue.
According to a spokesman for the police department, officers were called to the building on Monday afternoon because a group of unruly people were trespassing and causing damage to a wall.
When the property management sent in a work crew to repair the broken walls, it sparked a fight between the police and people defending the improvised pathway.
Witness video captured cops addressing young males who were standing inside a brick wall’s hollowed-out space. Following one of the men’s removal from the dirt crevasse by the authorities, a crowd of bystanders is seen shoving the officers, throwing wooden desks, and strewing prayer books. An cop seemed to spray the jeering bunch with an irritant.
Ten persons were detained, according to the police, one for impeding governmental administration and the other nine for criminal mischief and criminal trespass.The purpose and date of the tunnel’s construction were not readily apparent.
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