Israeli and Jewish media said authorities arrested at least two top executives of the radical ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) cult, Lev Tahor, in Guatemala in a combined operation by the FBI and local authorities after a week of an undercover investigation.
The cult leaders were arrested after Guatemalan police and U.S. forces raided Lev Tahor's compound.
Multiple sources told The Jerusalem Post that local Guatemalan officials and the FBI apprehended the cult members in question, Yoel and Shmuel Weingarten. The two purportedly had arrest warrants in the United States for kidnapping and child abuse, the U.S. Department of Justice said. Local Guatemalan media identified the culprits in the story.
Times of Israel said former members of the cult labeled the two as Lev Tahor's "brains" based on the Kikar Hashabbat website, a Hebrew-language Israeli news website aimed at Haredi audiences.
Several raids on the cult's leaders and members have been carried out by U.S. and Guatemalan police in recent years. The cult's kidnapping and child abuse claims were the catalysts for multiple operations.
Yaakov Weinstein, the cult's head, was arrested in March. Four members were charged in 2019 with kidnapping two children. The children had been abducted by their mother, who wished to return them to Lev Tahor. Jacob Rosner, one of the defendants, was married to one of the minors.
According to local accounts, the operation began last week when an FBI agent and two PNC (National Civil Police) agents penetrated the cult's agricultural facility. The compound in question was in Oratorio, Santa Rosa, in the town of El Amatillo.
The raid involved 100 police officers and 40 police cars. The authorities dispatched the massive force out of fear that the cult members would riot, allowing the suspects to flee.
Meanwhile, a representative for the sect told local media that the operation was illegal and that the captives were Guatemalans. According to a senior official who did not want to be identified, the FBI has no permission to operate in Guatemala.
There were also unsubstantiated claims of a gunfight between members of the sect and law authorities, according to Kikar Hashabbat.
Girls as young as 12 years old have been accused of being forced into marriages with much older men within the cult. The cult was created in the late 1980s in New York by Lev Tahor, and then relocated to Canada in 2003.
Shlomo Helbrans, the group's founder, was convicted of kidnapping a youngster he was coaching in New York in the early 1990s but was released after only two years in prison.
The group's founder moved his movement to Canada in 2003 after being deported to Israel in 2000. The cult had been there for ten years before Canadian authorities became concerned. They all went to Guatemala after the tense situation in Canada.
Shlomo Helbrans drowned in Mexico in 2017, leaving the group's leadership in the hands of his son Nachman and a few friends who were said to be even more radical.
© 2024 Latin Times. All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
