Authorities in Guatemala have resisted efforts by members of a Jewish sect to recapture 160 youngsters 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 critical sexual offences.
Inside Minister Francisco Jimenez mentioned they had been allegedly being abused by a member of the sect.
However on Sunday, sect members broke right into a care centre the place they had been being held in an effort to 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 youngster marriage, inflicts harsh punishments even for minor transgressions and requires ladies and women as younger as three years previous to utterly cowl up with robes.
The sect accuses the Guatemalan authorities of non secular persecution.
The neighborhood 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 Metropolis, on Friday, taking the youngsters into care.
Prosecutors mentioned there have been suspicions of “pressured being pregnant, mistreatment of minors and rape”.
However two days later, about 100 of the youngsters’s family members – 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 Legal professional Common’s Workplace mentioned.
However 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 Legal professional Common’s Workplace added.
Officers had beforehand tried to examine on the youngsters’s wellbeing, however had been prevented from coming into the farm by sect members.
Authorities estimate that the neighborhood is made up of about 50 households residing in Guatemala, the US, Canada and different nations.
The Jewish Neighborhood of Guatemala has issued a press release disowning the sect, describing it as international to its personal organisation.
It expressed assist for the Guatemalan authorities in finishing up needed investigations “to guard the lives and integrity of minors and different weak teams which may be in danger”.