Lev Tahor denies crimes, says ‘Guatemalan government will fall’ if fostered minors die

Published January 25, 2025 By admin with Comments 0

Guatemala City, Jan 24 (EFE). – The leaders of the ultra-Orthodox Jewish cult Lev Tahor in Guatemala deny accusations of crimes against minors, including sex trafficking, that led to the separation of 160 children from the community and warn that the government “will fall” if one of those minors dies.

“If one of the children taken from us dies, the Guatemalan government will fall,” Uriel Goldman, one of the local leaders of Lev Tahor, told EFE this week outside a family court, where authorities tried to identify the parents of the children rescued in December.

Goldman said the minors in state custody “have almost no food and are in poor health,” noting that his community has international support and that the actions of Guatemalan authorities are frowned upon abroad.

On Dec.21, Guatemalan authorities accused Lev Tahor of sex trafficking and raided a farm in the municipality of Oratorio, in the southeastern province of Santa Rosa, rescuing 160 minors.

According to Goldman, Lev Tahor settled in Oratorio in 2016 after tensions with indigenous communities in San Juan la Laguna, which forced them to leave the country’s highlands, where they were originally based.

Tensions between the community, which arrived in Guatemala in 2013, and the state institutions in charge of the case have increased since the separation of the minors and the arrest of another of their leaders, Jonathan Cardona, who tried to flee to El Salvador.

Nearly 300 members of Lev Tahor, which had kept a low profile for years, became embroiled in the judicial process after the escape of four minors in November who reported abusive conditions.

The Public Prosecutor’s Office justified the raid on suspicion of multiple crimes of “human trafficking in the form of forced pregnancy, abuse of minors and rape.”

Content retrieved from: https://efe.com/en/latest-news/2025-01-24/lev-tahor-denies-crimes-says-guatemalan-government-will-fall-if-fostered-minors-die/.