Members of an ultra-Orthodox Jewish sect forced the door of a medical center in the capital this Sunday, December 22, to recover around a hundred children belonging to their group, some of whom escaped. They had been exfiltrated two days earlier by the authorities following an investigation into suspicion of human trafficking.
Members of an ultra-Orthodox Jewish sect in Guatemala, suspected of sexual violence against minors, attempted on Sunday December 22 to take back by force 160 children placed in a specialized center by the authorities. A special “alert” was issued for those who escaped. Two days earlier, the authorities had rescued these children who lived in a property of the sectarian group Lev Tahor (“Pure Heart” in Hebrew). From then on, they were taken care of in a care center in the capital, announced the Minister of the Interior and the public prosecutor.
At 4:30 p.m. (11:30 p.m. in France) this Sunday, some of the members of the sect “barged in” inside the medical center “forcing the door” and in “removing” several children, explained the Attorney General of the Nation in a message on reported an AFP photographer on site.
Most of the children were recovered with the help of the police. But in the evening, the Social Affairs Secretariat indicated in a press release that an unspecified number of children had left the center at the time of the break-in, “with the help of adults”and that they remained untraceable. “In doing so, they evaded the temporary and exceptional accommodation process of which they were the beneficiaries”continued the same source, adding that a “alert” special for the search for missing minors has been activated.
“Forced pregnancies, child abuse and rape”
“We want them to let them out of here”declared earlier in the day Uriel Goldman, a representative of the Lev Tahor families gathered in front of the reception center. According to him, the religious group is the target “of lies” and of “false denunciations”. Before denouncing, “an external pressure [pour] destroy the community.
The December 20 search of the sect's property, located about sixty kilometers southwest of Guatemala, was motivated by suspicions of human trafficking. “in the form of forced pregnancies, child abuse and rape”according to prosecutor Dimas Jiménez. The searches made it possible to discover the presumed bones of a minor, the prosecution had informed.
In response, the sect – made up of some 50 families, mainly from Guatemala, the United States and Canada according to the authorities – described the investigations targeting it as “religious persecution”. Lev Tahor was founded in the 1980s and practices an ultra-Orthodox form of Judaism, which includes requiring women to wear black tunics that cover them from head to toe. The group settled in Oratorio in 2016, after raids by the police and prosecutors against several of its buildings in Guatemala, the country where the sect was established in 2013. At the time, the Guatemalan authorities indicated that they were taking action at the request of Israel, whose police were looking for a missing minor. In 2014, the sect was expelled from a Mayan village due to several disputes with residents.
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