The Mexican police removed a group of children and adolescents from a camp in the jungle, belonging to an ultra-orthodox Jewish group in the country, as the BBC learned.
The agents arrested 2 members of Lev Tahor suspected of being involved in human trafficking and committing serious sexual offenses, including rape, the Israeli Foreign Ministry reported.
One of the minors rescued from the camp, 3 years old, was put on a flight to Israel.
The Lev Tahor group (Pure Heart in Hebrew) is known for its extreme practices and for imposing a strict regime on its members.
Advocates child marriages, imposes severe punishments on the smallest transgressions and asks women and girls from the age of 3 to cover themselves completely with robes.
The guidelines have earned it the nickname of the Jewish Taliban, due to the similarities what that your dress code is in line with the one imposed by the Sunni Islamist group that controls Afghanistan.
The operation
The police entered the camp, located about 17 kilometers north of the city of Tapachula, in the state of Chiapas, last Friday morning.
A judge The federal government gave the order to arrest several leaders of the group who are suspected of participating in child abuse, after an investigation carried out by the Deputy Attorney General’s Office Specialized in Organized Crime Investigation.
A An Israeli source with connections to the rescue operation said the boys and girls were quickly separated from the rest of the group, fearing that other members would put them at risk by trying to prevent the rescue.
Found 26 members of the group in the camp, including Israelis with dual citizenship from countries including Canada, the US and Guatemala, the Israeli Foreign Ministry explained.
He added that a Canadian citizen and an Israeli citizen were arrested in the operation. Two other members required by justice are on the run after leaving the camp two days before the police action.
Another five were detained for alleged violation of immigration laws.
The The rest of the members of the sect are in the facilities of the Mexican Welfare Secretariat, awaiting the decision that is made with them, said the Israeli Foreign Ministry.
The child under 3 years he was the son of an Israeli, Yisrael Amir, who left the group earlier. Amir flew with his son to Israel this Monday.
“Dangerous cult”
The Mexican police worked together with a group of four volunteers from Israel, including former Mossad agents, to carry out the operation.
The elite police unit that carried out the raid “very carefully and without resorting to violent methods” included male and female agents due to the large number of women and children in the sect, said the Israeli source.
“The Mexican authorities did their job in the best way possible”, he added.
The operation started approximately two years ago, when Amir and other relatives of members of the sect asked former Mossad agents for help.
The team traveled between Israel and Guatemala, where the religious group settled in 2014, and carried out follow-up and n collaboration with local authorities, security agencies and a Guatemalan private investigator.
In January, some 40 either 50 members of the sect crossed the border illegally into Mexico, where they were followed to a jungle area in the north of Tapachula.
The group in Guatemala
The leadership of the group in Guatemala is at the center of the investigation of a kidnapping case since 2018, when two minors who were taken to New York by their mother after escaping from the community were kidnapped again.
They were rescued three weeks later in Mexico.
Nine members of the sect were charged in this case:
Rabbi Shlomo Helbrans formed Lev Tahor in Israel at 407 and then moved to the USA
He was imprisoned two years after being sentenced for kidnapping in 1988. Drowned in Mexico at 113 .
The group has some 350 members and has been forced to move from country to country in recent years after coming under scrutiny from local authorities.
Currently covering Israel, USA, North Macedonia, Morocco, Mexico and Guatemala. At least 70 or 80 of its members remain in the Central American country.
While some describe Lev Tahor as ultra-orthodox , the group follows its own rules and has been deemed a “dangerous cult” by an Israeli court.
Its leaders deny breaking local laws and say they are persecuted for their convictions.
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