Authorities in Guatemala have resisted efforts by members of a Jewish sect to recapture 160 kids rescued from its premises.
The kids had been taken into care on Friday when police raided a farm utilized by the Lev Tahor motion, which is underneath investigation in a number of nations for severe sexual offences.
Interior Minister Francisco Jimenez stated they had been allegedly being abused by a member of the sect.
But on Sunday, sect members broke right into a care centre the place they had been being held in an try and get them again, resulting in scuffles with police.
The Lev Tahor sect is understood for extremist practices and imposing a strict regime on its followers.
It advocates little one marriage, inflicts harsh punishments even for minor transgressions and requires girls and women as younger as three years previous to fully cowl up with robes.
The sect accuses the Guatemalan authorities of spiritual persecution.
The group settled in Mexico and Guatemala between 2014 and 2017. In 2022, members of the sect had been arrested in a police operation within the southern Mexican state of Chiapas, however they had been later freed for lack of proof.
The occasions started when police raided the sect’s farm in Oratorio, south-east of Guatemala City, on Friday, taking the youngsters into care.
Prosecutors stated there have been suspicions of “pressured being pregnant, mistreatment of minors and rape”.
But two days later, about 100 of the youngsters’s relations – all members of the sect – gathered exterior the centre the place they had been being held to name for his or her return.
Some sect members then pressured open the gate and tried to abduct the youngsters and adolescents sheltered there, the Attorney General’s Office stated.
But the youngsters had been intercepted by the authorities and put right into a white minibus, native media reported.
With police assist, the centre “managed to find and shield everybody once more”, the Attorney General’s Office added.
Officials had beforehand tried to verify on the youngsters’s wellbeing, however had been prevented from getting into the farm by sect members.
Authorities estimate that the group is made up of about 50 households residing in Guatemala, the US, Canada and different nations.
The Jewish Community of Guatemala has issued a press release disowning the sect, describing it as international to its personal organisation.
It expressed help for the Guatemalan authorities in finishing up crucial investigations “to guard the lives and integrity of minors and different susceptible teams that could be in danger”.
