A group of young Hasidic Jewish students faced a judge Wednesday after they were indicted on charges tied to a secret tunnel dug under a famous Brooklyn synagogue and then clashing with police in January.
Thirteen young men pleaded not guilty in court during their arraignments three months after the shocking hideout was discovered at the Chabad-Lubavitch headquarters at 770 Eastern Parkway in Crown Heights.
Eight of the nine men who were previously arrested were in court with another five who were freshly charged on Wednesday, a Brooklyn District Attorney’s spokesperson said.
During their arraignment, a judge ordered the men, who are mostly from Israel, to hand over their passports, their defense lawyer Levi Huebner told The Post Wednesday night.
But the prosecutors’ request to keep the students away from the synagogue, known as 770, was denied by a judge, Huebner said. The defendants study and worship there.
Another four men who have been indicted are currently in Israel, but Huebner said they intend to answer the charges.
“Nobody’s trying to run away,” he insisted.
Six defendants have been charged with obstruction of a government administration and another 11 are facing criminal mischief charges, Huebner said, adding that the latter charge was a felony.
The age range for the students is between 18 and 21, he said. All but one came from Israel for a year of study.
A group of rebels from the Chabad-Lubavitch movement used shovels to dig a secret excavation under the sacred entity beginning during the pandemic because higher-ups were slow to expand the synagogue’s sanctuary, sources previously said.
The rebels first gained entry into a deserted Jewish men’s ritual bath around the corner on Kingston Avenue and then broke through a 2-by-2-foot metal gate in the former bath’s basement wall and tunneled their way under a sanctuary space reserved for the women next door to the synagogue.
Diggers attempted to stop cement-truck workers trying to undo their work at the request of synagogue officials earlier this year with the rogue rabbinical students caught on camera tearing down wood panels and wooden support beams between the tunnel and synagogue as they tried to get into the tunnel to protect it.
When NYPD officers arrived, a fracas broke out, leading to arrests.
Court papers said in January that at least four students charged back then were found hiding “inside a hole” in a wall they damaged and refused cops’ orders to come out.
