The National Civil Police of El Salvador confirmed this Friday that they captured the Jonathan Emmanuel Cardona Castillo, a Salvadoran with an arrest warrant in Guatemala, accused of being the leader of an ultra-Orthodox Jewish sect Lev Tahor linked to cases of alleged abuse of minors.
Cardona Castillo, who was subject to an international search and arrest warrant from Interpol, was detained by the Salvadoran authorities when he tried to enter El Salvador through the Las Chinamas border, in the department of Ahuachapán.
The alleged leader of the sect Lev Tahor is accused of the crimes of human trafficking in the form of forced pregnancy, rape and abuse of minors.
As reported by the Salvadoran police on their official account on the social network
On December 20, authorities in Guatemala raided a community of the Orthodox Jewish sect Lev Tahor located in the department of San Rosaabout 90 kilometers from the Guatemalan capital, due to complaints of alleged abuses and rescued at least 160 minors and 40 women, who were placed under protection.
The sect has spread to several countries and has been constantly denounced for abuse of minors.
The international arrest warrant against 23-year-old Cardona Castillo was issued on December 28, 2024. He has Salvadoran and Guatemalan nationality and has been profiled as the leader of the sect.
The Guatemalan prosecutor’s office assured that in the December raid the skeleton of a minor had been located and confirmed the rescue of minors who were allegedly abused and the kidnapping of passports, computers, among others.
According to the prosecutor’s office, the complaint was filed on November 11 “for the possible commission of crimes ranging from forced pregnancy, abuse of minors, rape.” The acts would have been committed by at least one member of the community against minors. .
In 2022, Mexican authorities arrested a sect leader accused of organized crime and human trafficking in the municipality of Tapachula, near the border with Guatemala; then women and minors would also have been rescued.
Escape in Mexico and why they call them “Jewish Taliban!
Controversy has surrounded the ultra-Orthodox Lev Tahor sect for years, which has a history of constant changes.
The group, which would consist of about 500 members, lived in Israel between 1988 and 1990 (and again between 2000 and 2003), in the United States from 1990 to 2000, in Canada from 2003 to 2014, in Guatemala in 2014, in Mexico since 2017, and then in Romania from the end of 2021, after being deported from Kurdistan.
They have also moved to Bosnia and Herzegovina, and since February 2022 they have been present in North Macedonia.
Their constant displacements respond to their refusal to submit to government agencies in charge of child welfare, in the face of complaints of abuse against the religious organization.
Without going far, in 2022 they starred in a scandal that went viral worldwide when members of the sect were filmed fleeing a detention center in Mexico. It was when in an operation by Mexican authorities – with the help of Israeli agents – they arrested 26 followers of the sect and two followers accused of human trafficking and sexual abuse.
That happened on September 20, 2022 and the news went around the world. According to the newspaper El País, that operation was carried out with the collaboration of the Government of Israel and had the objective of rescuing a group of people who had been transferred to Mexico illegally and were living in a camp in the jungle of Chiapas.
Days later, there was an escape from the detention center that was recorded in a video that shows how women and children flee after a struggle with guards at a care center of the National System for the Comprehensive Development of Families (DIF) in Huixtla, a community of Chiapas 50 kilometers from the border with Guatemala.
Video
Twenty members of the Jewish sect Lev Tahor escape detention in Mexico after a fight with the group, accused of drug trafficking and rape. The event occurred early Thursday, September 29, in Huixtla, located about 190 kilometers from the border with Guatemala, according to an official from the government agency.
He had also starred in a controversy when in 2014, they made the news in Guatemala, where an indigenous Mayan town began to receive the presence of dozens of Orthodox Jews who arrived to stay. Little by little, more and more arrived at the place, called San Juan de La Laguna, until completing a community of more than 230 people. It all ended in a cultural clash that led to the departure of the sect members from there.
But what is Lev Tahor? Their name, which in Hebrew means “pure heart”, reflects their religious approach, which is based on an extremely conservative interpretation of Jewish law (Halacha) and they are a religious group that has been classified as a sect and has been peppered with denunciations. of child abuse, coercive control and authoritarian practices.
Founded in the 1980s by Shlomo Helbrans, a rabbi who initially belonged to the Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) movement in Israel, members of Lev Tahor distanced themselves from other traditional Jewish communities, establishing their own norms and practices by which in Israel itself They have been labeled the “Jewish Taliban.”
After the arrest of its founder Helbrans in 1994 on kidnapping charges, the group began to move from one country to another to avoid intervention by the authorities and thus ended up in Latin American countries.
The sect is extreme even in its way of eating. As published a few years ago by the BBC, they do not eat chickens or chicken eggs, as they consider them to be genetically manipulated, but they do consume geese and their eggs. They also do not eat rice, green onions or leafy vegetables, for fear that they may have an insect.
“In the case of other vegetables and fruits, they always remove the skin before consuming them, even in the case of tomatoes. As for drinks, they only drink milk from cows that they can milk themselves and they make their own wine. Children, for their part, cannot eat sweets that have been bought in a store. Their sweets, therefore, must be limited to the consumption of homemade chocolate or fruits, nuts and seeds,” lists the British site.
The relationship of the members of the sect with technology is almost non-existent. They also limit the use of electronic devices as much as possible, such as televisions, computers and cell phones.
In the last days of 2024, the Lev Tahor sect denounced the Guatemalan authorities for separating the children of that community from the rest. “The Guatemalan Attorney General’s Office will forcefully separate the children again and return them to a home that is not suitable for children, with horrible conditions,” they reported in X.
“We invite the Guatemalan media community to document this grave injustice against our Jewish community and grave abuse of our children. They were waiting for the media to leave so they could do it illegally and by force without any repercussions “, they reported in X.