CANADA/GUATEMALE
The JC
By Adam Feinstein, September 18, 2014
The 230 Jews who were forced to leave the remote Guatemalan village of San Juan la Laguna for the capital, Guatemala City, earlier this month were members of the Charedi sect Lev Tahor, which has allegedly engaged in human trafficking and harboured sex abusers, according to search warrants issued by authorities in Quebec.
The Canadian documents detail a criminal case built against the group by Interpol and Israeli police before its members fled to Guatemala in March with its leader, Rabbi Shlomo Helbrans.
The warrants, issued in January, include allegations by former Lev Tahor members – among them, Helbrans’ own brother, Nathan – of physical beatings, poor hygiene, forced ingestion of drugs, under-age marriage and sexual assault.
The group has vigorously denied all the allegations.
Helbrans founded Lev Tahor in Israel in the late 1980s and ran it both there and in Brooklyn, New York – where he was convicted of kidnapping – and then for a decade near Montreal.
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