A German steakhouse heiress has been accused of hiring Israeli spies to kidnap her children from their father in Denmark, in a long-running custody battle.
Christina Block, heiress of the Block House steak chain, which has 53 restaurants across Europe, hired Cyber Cupula, a private security firm run by former Israeli soldier David Barkay and around 20 others, to snatch her two children on New Year’s Eve 2023 from the Danish town of Gråsten, Die Zeit reported.
It followed a bitter legal battle between Ms Block and Stephan Hensel, the children’s father, sparked by their refusal to return to their mother during a visit to their father in Denmark.
The couple had agreed that the four children would live with their mother and see their father every other weekend. But that arrangement began to unravel, with the two younger children telling a judge their mother was violent towards them and expressing a wish to live with their father. The court initially ruled against Ms Block, but was overruled by an appeal court.
During a visit to Denmark in 2021, the children refused to return to their mother in Germany, Mr Hensel said. They again claimed that Ms Block had been violent towards them, which she denies.
‘Abducted during fireworks display’
Citing thousands of pages of court documents, the newspaper reported that the children were abducted during a fireworks display after a long operation that involved the security company following the Hensels.
A company log lists 300 hours of work between Sept 22 2021 and Oct 2 2021 totalling €40,000, Die Zeit reported, with Ms Block invoicing a total of €1.4 million on the case.
Mr Hensel was knocked down by masked men during the display and the children bundled into a car and transported to the border.
From there they were transferred into a van and taken to a farm in southern Germany owned by the security company and later handed over to Ms Block.
The plan was hatched with the involvement of Ms Block’s new German partner, Gerhard Delling, a former TV presenter, and several former members of Hamburg’s elite criminal police, the court heard.
Shortly after their kidnapping, the children were sent back to their father at the order of a Hamburg court. The German newspaper Bild reports that the Hensel family now live under false names in Denmark and are said to have moved several times for fear of another kidnapping.
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