Guatemala has rescued at the least 160 kids and 40 girls following a raid on an extremist ultra-Orthodox Jewish sect’s compound over experiences of abuse.
Interior Minister Francisco Jimenez mentioned the National Civil Police and members of the navy participated within the raid on the Lev Tahor group’s neighborhood about 55 miles (90 kilometers) southeast of the capital.
“The safety of girls and boys is an absolute precedence,” Jimenez mentioned.
Guatemala’s Attorney General’s Office mentioned in an announcement on the social platform X that suspected bones of 1 youngster have been discovered.
The workplace mentioned a grievance was made in November of attainable crimes together with compelled pregnancies, mistreatment of minors and rape.
Later Sunday, about 100 of the kids’s family who belong to the sect gathered exterior a care middle in Guatemala City, the place the kids have been being held, to demand their return.
Sect members then “broke into” the middle round 4:30 p.m. native time (10.30 p.m. GMT Sunday), “forcing open the gate and abducting the children and adolescents sheltered there,” an announcement from the Attorney General’s Office mentioned.
Those exterior the shelter tried to stop the authorities from bringing again the minors, resulting in some scuffles with police, in keeping with an AFP photographer on the scene.
History of authorized issues
With police assist, the middle “managed to locate and protect everyone again,” the Attorney General’s Office mentioned, though the Secretariat of Social Welfare of the Presidency later clarified some “evaded” authorities and a search alert has been activated.
“We want them to let the children out of here,” Uriel Goldman, a consultant of the households, informed AFP exterior the middle earlier than the tried recapture of the minors.
The sect has run into authorized issues in varied international locations.
In 2022, Mexican authorities arrested a frontrunner of the sect close to the Guatemalan border and eliminated a number of girls and kids from their compound.
In 2021, two leaders of the group have been convicted of kidnapping and youngster sexual exploitation crimes in New York.
They allegedly kidnapped two kids from their mom to return a 14-year-old lady to an unlawful sexual relationship with an grownup male.
The sect is thought to have members in Canada, the United States, Mexico, Guatemala and Israel.
Source: www.dailysabah.com