One of the leaders of the extremist Hasidic Lev Tahor sect Eliazar Rompler was arrested in Guatemala. He had been wanted on charges of serious child abuse in Israel and had escaped the country using a fake passport, after a court ordered that he not be permitted to leave. Guatemalan officials said they have begun the process of extradition to Israel.
Rompler, was indicted for alleged crimes committed against 9 and 10-year-old children in Canada between 2009 and 2011, when he served as the principal of a school in Canada belonging to the sect.
Members of Lev Tahor sect riot in Guatemala after a police raid
According to the indictment he beat two pupils in his school. He suspected on of them of stealing money from a charitable collection can. "The child was made to lay on a table with his legs tied to it, to prevent him from moving," the indictment read.
Then the accused and another teacher began hitting the child with a belt and a stick for a number of hours while the child cried for help and begged them to stop." As a result of the beating, the child was unable to stand on his feet and had to be carried home.
Rompler suspected the second child had lied and gathered pupils and teachers together to tell them there was a liar among them and that he must confess. But no one came forward.
"Rompler then laid the child on a table and two students beat hem with a whip for an hour while the accused and the others watched"
The Lev Tahor sect was founded in the 1980s in Jerusalem as a Yeshiva headed by Shlomo Helbrans. The cult members escaped to the United States in the 1990s aver an security investigation was launched into their contacts with Islamists.
Helbrans was arrested by the FBI in 1994, when he was suspected of kidnapping a 13-year-old boy. After a long trial during which more complaints of imprisonment and abduction of minors were raised, he was convicted and sentenced to jail. Late in the 1990 he was deported to Israel, but he and the sect settled in the Quebec province in Canada where he received refugee status. In 2013 the sect relocated to the province on Ontario where social service officials said they had evidence of child abuse and underage marriages. Members of the cult in Israel testified that children were beaten with bats and iron rods and locked in the basement. The Canadian social services also received reports that children were forced into marriage at the age of 14.
After the authorities attempted to move some children into foster care, Helbrans decided to relocate the sect to Guatemala
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Lev Tahor succeeded in moving some children to Guatemala and most members of the sect settled in the town of San Juan Laguna. In 2014, the local authorities decided to remove the sect from the town claiming the members had engaged in religious proselytization. After Israeli officials provided evidence of abuse of children and adults, the police raided the building housing the sect to investigate. Them the members moved to the a more secluded region.