Guatemala: A member of a sect suspected of raping minors arrested

A Salvadoran member of an ultra-Orthodox Jewish sect under investigation in Guatemala for rape of minors has been arrested in El Salvador, the Guatemalan prosecutor’s office announced Thursday.

On December 20, Guatemalan authorities rescued 160 children from a property belonging to this sect, called Lev Tahor, and which includes some 50 families mainly from Guatemala, the United States and Canada.

Interpol issued a “red notice” at the end of December, on the basis of an arrest warrant, against Jonathan Emmanuel Cardona Castillo, aged 23 years old according to the file and of Salvadoran nationality.

“Human trafficking in the form of forced pregnancy”

“The prosecutor’s office has been informed of the arrest of the member of the Lev Tahor community, Jonathan Emmanuel Cardona Castillo,” in El Salvador, prosecutor Juan Francisco Reyes said in a video posted on social networks.

The Salvadoran authorities did not immediately communicate on this arrest.

Johathan Emmanuel Cardona is accused of the crimes of “rape, abuse of minors and human trafficking in the form of forced pregnancy,” explained the prosecutor. Juan Francisco Reyes added that they had received four complaints from teenage girls against the 23-year-old man for “humiliation and one of them rape.”

“Child abuse and rape”

The search took place at the sect’s farm in Oratorio, in southeastern Guatemala, as part of an investigation into suspected human trafficking “in the form of forced pregnancies, child abuse and rape.

After the rescue of 160 children, around a hundred members of the group Lev Tahor (“Pure Heart” in Hebrew) attempted to forcibly take back the placed children, who were able to be recovered and placed under legal protection.

Lev Tahor has been based in Guatemala since 2013. Founded in the 1980s, it practices an ultra-orthodox form of Judaism, according to which women must wear black tunics that cover them from head to toe.

In 2014, the sect was expelled from a Mayan locality due to conflicts with locals. The group moved to Oratorio in 2016 after several police interventions against its premises. At the time, the authorities said they were acting at the request of Israel, whose police were looking for a missing minor. The sect, for its part, considers itself the victim of “religious persecution”.

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