Tuesday, 13 March 2007

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Leonardo DiCaprio's bodyguards arrested in Israel

Security team clash with photographers

Israeli Police arrested two members of Leonardo DiCaprio's security team after they clashed with photographers during a visit to a holy site in Jerusalem on Monday.

"Two of his [DiCaprio's] security guards were arrested by police after being involved in a fight that broke out," Israel Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told local newspaper Haaretz. "They are being questioned."

DiCaprio, 32, and his girlfriend, model Bar Refaeli, 21, were taking a private tour of the Western Wall tunnels, next to Judaism's holiest site, the Western Wall, in the Old City of Jerusalem, Haaretz reports.

According to Rosenfeld, a crowd of photographers was waiting outside the tunnels for the couple to emerge when the trouble occurred.

DiCaprio was photographed with his head down and face obscured by a black hat, surrounded by guards amid the melee. The couple were bundled into a waiting white van, which sped from the area.

"They also visited the Yad Vashem [Holocaust memorial] museum, which was closed off to other visitors," Eran Swissa, a journalist for Israeli newspaper Maariv, tells PEOPLE. "Herds of photographers tried to take photos but the couple didn't let them."

The couple, who have been linked for nearly a year, had arrived in Israel amid much fanfare by the Israeli media – partly because local girl Refaeli has snagged one of Hollywood's most eligible men.

"They arrived on Sunday morning and her father Rafi was in the car that took them from a private exit in the airport to the family home," Swissa says. "Leo was in the front with the baseball hat and Bar was the back and both were hiding from all of the photographers outside the house."

The couple had tried to fly quietly into Israel on Sunday, but their night flight from Frankfurt, Germany, happened to be carrying a group of Israeli entertainment reporters on their way back from a press junket in Ireland, according to the Associated Press.

Refaeli's family's home in a Tel Aviv suburb was surrounded by photographers, at TV host Guy Pines even rented a helicopter to cover the scene – a first for Israeli media coverage, he told the AP.