About 20 members of an extreme Jewish sect have broken out of a detention centre in Mexico.
Key points:
- Lev Tahor practises child marriage and mandates full-body covering for girls as young as three
- Video shows the members in detention overpowering guards to escape
- Two of their leaders have been arrested on suspicion of human trafficking and serious sex offences
The group had been held there after a police raid on their jungle compound in the country’s south last week.
Two of their leaders have been arrested on suspicion of human trafficking and serious sex offences.
Lev Tahor is a fundamentalist sect that practises child marriages and mandates full-body covering for girls as young as three, and is thought to have up to 300 members.
A Reuters video showed the group overpowering guards and forcing their way out through a door of the compound in Huixtla, in the municipality of Chiapas, on Wednesday night local time.
Escapees included children and women holding babies.
They climbed into a waiting truck headed to Mexico’s border with Guatemala, according to the Associated Press.
Local police, National Guard and Mexico’s immigration agency said they did not pursue them.
On Tuesday, Israel’s foreign ministry said the raid “took place after Mexican police gathered incriminating evidence against several members of the cult on suspicion of drug trafficking, rape and more”.
In a statement, the ministry said a former member who took part in the raid to retrieve his three-year-old son was now reunited with him, and the pair had returned to Israel.
Videos published by Mexican media had shown children climbing on the bars of the facility, crying and calling for their families.
“They wouldn’t let us leave”, said David Rosales, a member of the sect, after the escape.
“This is a violation of freedom and religious rights.”
The group was founded in the 1980s by Israeli Shlomo Helbrans and practices an austere form of Judaism.
Lev Tahor (meaning pure heart in Hebrew) has faced multiple allegations of kidnapping, child marriage and physical abuse since it was founded in the 1980s.
This year, two Lev Tahor leaders were sentenced in the United States to 12 years in prison for kidnapping and sex trafficking crimes.
The group has moved countries frequently, including from the United States, Israel, Canada, Guatemala, Mexico and parts of Europe.
Reuters/AP