The Jewish group Lev Tahor has accused the Guatemalan authorities of persecuting people on the basis of religion.
Authorities in Guatemala have also found several children who were taken by Jewish sectarians who broke into orphanages where they were kept.
Officials said members of the Lev Tahor sect entered the house on Sunday to avenge the 160 minors who were taken from the sect on Friday in a police raid. Authorities are accusing the group of child sexual abuse.
Some of the children were found on Sunday, while others recovered on Monday, according to the AFP news agency.
A farm in Oratoria, southwest of Guatemala City, was seized on Friday by government officials to rescue children and young people who are “being abused by a member of the Lev Tahor group,” Interior Minister Francisco Jimenez said.
Nancy Paiz, the prosecutor of Guatemala's Prosecutor's Office Against Human Trafficking, said in a press conference: “Based on what the complainants said, the evidence found, and the medical tests, it was possible to confirm that there are other types of human trafficking.” these young children, such as forced marriage, torture and other specific violence.”
About 100 relatives of the apostate children gathered on Sunday outside the orphanage in Guatemala City, where the children were kept, and told them to return.
Members of the group “came in” between 4:30pm local time (22:30 GMT), “forced open the gate and robbed the children and young people who were hiding there”, a statement from the Attorney General's office said.
“We want them to get the children out,” Uriel Goldman, a representative of the families, told AFP outside the capital before another attempt to abduct the children.
Those outside the shelter tried to stop the authorities from returning the children, which led to clashes with police, according to an AFP photographer at the scene.
With the help of the police, the center “managed to find and protect everyone”, the Office of the Attorney General said, although the Secretariat of Social Welfare of the Presidency also explained that some “escaped” from the authorities and an investigation alert has been opened.
Lev Tahor has also criticized the authorities for persecuting people because of religion.
“The authorities … lie and make false claims,” Goldman said.
The Lev Tahor group, founded in 1988 in Israel, practices Judaism that refers to Jewish law that includes long prayers and arranged marriages.
The community settled in Mexico and Guatemala between 2014 and 2017. In 2022, the Mexican police in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas on the Guatemalan border rescued a group of children and young people from the Lev Tahor camp, whose members were arrested on suspicion. engaging in child abuse.
The Jewish Community of Guatemala in a statement said that the group is unusual for its organization and said that it is assisting the Guatemalan authorities in carrying out the necessary research “to protect the lives and integrity of children and other vulnerable groups who may be at risk”.
It called on “the government and international organizations whose countries are members of Lev Tahor, to cooperate in order to protect those whose rights may be violated”.
The juveniles are now under the protection of the state and the investigation is ongoing.