The Jewish sect Lev Tahor has accused Guatemalan authorities of religious persecution.
Guatemalan authorities have recovered several children taken by members of an ultra-Orthodox Jewish sect who broke into a daycare center where they were being held.
Officials said members of the Lev Tahor sect entered the shelter on Sunday to retrieve 160 minors who were abducted from the sect’s compound in a police raid on Friday. The authorities accuse the sect of child sexual abuse.
According to the AFP news agency, some of the children were found on Sunday and others were rescued early on Monday.
The farm site in Oratoria, southwest of Guatemala City, was searched by authorities on Friday to rescue children and teenagers who were “allegedly abused by a member of the Lev Tahor sect,” Interior Minister Francisco Jimenez said.
Nancy Paiz, prosecutor at the Guatemalan Anti-Human Trafficking Prosecutor’s Office, said at a press conference: “Based on the statements of the complainants, the evidence obtained and the medical examinations, it was possible to establish that there are forms of trafficking in these minors, such as forced marriage, abuse and related crimes.”
About 100 relatives of children belonging to the sect gathered Sunday outside a care center in Guatemala City where the children were being held to demand their return.
Cult members “then broke into the center at around 4:30 p.m. local time (22:30 GMT), “forcibly opened the gate and kidnapped the children and young people housed there,” a statement from the attorney general’s office said.
“We want them to let the children out of here,” Uriel Goldman, a representative of the families, told AFP outside the center before the attempted recapture of the minors.
According to an AFP photographer on the scene, people outside the shelter tried to prevent authorities from returning the minors, leading to some confrontations with police.
With the help of police, the center “managed again to locate and protect everyone,” the Attorney General’s Office said, although the Presidency’s Social Welfare Secretariat later clarified that some had “eluded” the authorities and a search alarm had been activated.
Lev Tahor has also accused local authorities of religious persecution.
“The authorities … are lying with false accusations,” Goldman said.
Founded in Israel in 1988, the Lev Tahor community practices a strict form of Judaism with interpretation of Jewish law that includes long prayer sessions and arranged marriages.
The community settled in Mexico and Guatemala between 2014 and 2017. In 2022, a Mexican police operation in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas, on the Guatemalan border, rescued a group of children and teenagers from a Lev Tahor camp, whose members were arrested on suspicion of involvement in attacks against minors.
Guatemala’s Jewish community said in a statement that the sect was alien to its organization and expressed support for Guatemalan authorities in conducting the necessary investigations “to protect the lives and integrity of minors and other vulnerable groups who may be at risk.” are”.
It called on the “government and diplomatic corps of countries whose nationalities are members of Lev Tahor to join forces to protect those whose rights may be violated.”
The minors are now under government protection and investigations are ongoing.
