A Salvadoran member of a Jewish sect under investigation in Guatemala for alleged sexual abuse of minors was arrested in El Salvador, the Guatemalan Prosecutor’s Office reported on Thursday. “Today (Thursday), the prosecutor’s office has been notified of the apprehension of the member of the Lev Tahor community, Jonathan Emmanuel Cardona Castillo, executed in the Republic of El Salvador,” said prosecutor Juan Francisco Reyes in a video released on social media.
The detainee is a member of this sect that practices an ultra-orthodox version of Judaism and whose farm in the municipality of Oratorio, in southeastern Guatemala, was raided on December 20 for an investigation related to possible sexual abuse and pregnancies of minors. Cardona is accused of the crimes of “rape, mistreatment of minors, and human trafficking in the form of forced pregnancy,” the prosecutor explained.
Reyes added that they received four complaints from adolescents against Cardona for “humiliation and one of them for sexual rape.” In the operation on the farm, 160 children were rescued who now remain sheltered with their mothers in a state shelter in the capital while the investigations progress, amid protests from the sect.
Days after the rescue, members of the sect tried to forcibly take several minors from the shelter. The Interpol red alert search for Cardona was activated at the end of December. According to the file, the detainee, 23 years old, is of Salvadoran nationality. For the moment, the Salvadoran authorities have not reported on his arrest.
Lev Tahor, which has described the investigations against it as “religious persecution” based on “false accusations,” settled in Oratorio in 2016 after being expelled from a Mayan indigenous village in 2014 due to conflicts with locals and spending time in a building in the Guatemalan capital. The sect was formed in the 1980s, and its members, who wear dark robes, settled in Guatemala in 2013.
Guatemalan authorities estimate that the group is made up of 50 families, mainly from Guatemala, the United States, and Canada.
