Guatemala finds children taken by Jewish sect after investigation into abuse | Religion News

The Jewish community Lev Tahur accused the Guatemalan authorities of religious persecution.

Guatemalan authorities have recovered several children kidnapped by members of an ultra-Orthodox Jewish sect after they stormed a care center where they were being held.

Officials said members of the Lev Tahur sect entered the shelter on Sunday in an attempt to reclaim 160 minors who were taken from the sect’s compound on Friday in a police raid. The authorities accuse the sect of sexually assaulting children.

Some of the children were found on Sunday, while others were recovered early Monday, according to Agence France-Presse.

Authorities raided the agricultural complex in Oratoria, southwest of Guatemala City, on Friday to rescue children and teenagers who were “allegedly abused by a member of the Lev Tahor sect,” Interior Minister Francisco Jimenez said.

“Based on the statements of the complainants, the evidence obtained and the medical examinations, it was possible to prove the existence of forms of human trafficking against these minors, such as forced marriage and abuse,” Nancy Baez, prosecutor in Guatemala’s Anti-Human Trafficking Prosecutor’s Office, said in a press conference. Treatment and related crimes.

About 100 relatives of children who belong to the sect gathered on Sunday outside a care center in Guatemala City, where the children were being held, to demand their return.

A statement from the prosecutor’s office said that members of the sect “stormed” the center at around 4:30 pm local time (22:30 GMT), “forced their entry into the gate and kidnapped the children and teenagers who were sheltering there.”

“We want them to let the children get out of here,” Uriel Goldman, a representative of the families, told AFP outside the center before the attempt to re-arrest the minors.

Those outside the shelter tried to prevent the authorities from returning the minors, which led to some clashes with the police, according to an AFP photographer at the scene.

The prosecutor’s office said that with the help of police, the center “was able to locate and protect everyone again,” although the presidential social welfare secretariat later clarified that some had “escaped” from the authorities and a search alarm had been activated.

Lev Tahir also accused local authorities of religious persecution.

“The authorities… lie with false accusations,” Goldman said.

The Lev Tahor sect, founded in 1988 in Israel, practices an ultra-Orthodox form of Judaism with an interpretation of Jewish law that includes long prayer sessions and arranged marriages.

This 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 the Lev Tahor camp, whose members were arrested on suspicion of doing so. Participation in violations against minors.

The Jewish community in Guatemala said in a statement that the sect is alien to its organization and expressed its support for the Guatemalan authorities in conducting the necessary investigations “to protect the lives and safety of minors and other vulnerable groups who may be at risk.”

She called on “the government and the diplomatic corps of countries whose nationalities are members of the Tahur League to unite efforts to protect those whose rights may be violated.”

The minors are now under government protection and investigations are still ongoing.