The Nazareth Magistrates Court, which allowed the news to be announced on Tuesday, remanded four suspects for ten days and another one for five days, and placed a female accomplice under house arrest.
The gang is suspected of carrying out at least four rapes, abducting their victims from roadside bus stops and the like and taking them to isolated spots. The first incident occurred in April 2005, against a 13-year-old girl in Kiryat Yam, and the second and third took place eight months later - one against a 19-year-old soldier near Kiryat Ata, and another against a 16-year-old in Kiryat Bialik.
The fourth rape of which they are suspected occurred this past November outside their own mostly Moslem village of Bir Al-Maksur, in the lower Galilee 20 kilometers east of Haifa. The victim was a 25-year-old woman abducted from a bus stop.
One victim told investigators that the rapists had told her that it was in revenge for IDF operations in Gaza. This was echoed by one of the suspects during police questioning.
The police had a picture of one of the apparent suspects since December 2005, but chose not to publicize it, nor to issue warnings about the existence of the gang, "in order not to harm the investigation." So said sources in the Northern Police District, Haaretz reported.
Bedouin leaders in the Galilee expressed consternation and sorrow at the news, saying such acts opposed their values.