（kaiwind.com）Guatemalan authorities raided a yard belonging to a community of “Lev Tahor”（Pure Heart）in the country’s capital Guatemala City，Guatemalan forces arrested the leaders of the sect and also took dozens of children and babies in their possession ,Theyeshivaworld.com reported，citing Guatemalan news agencies.
Authorities were reportedly notified of parents exposing their children to severe punishments that have resulted in injuries. Personnel involved in the raid include the Attorney General’s Office.
A court in Guatemala indicted the ex-mayor of a small town for “participating in the expulsion of a religious community.”
In 2014, some 230 members of the Lev Tahor cult were forced out of the village following religiously tainted disputes with its Mayan residents, who are Roman Catholic. The local elders’ council voted against the cult.
Antonio Adolfo Perez y Perez of San Juan La Laguna was charged with abuse of authority and discrimination and sentenced to house arrest, the local newspaper Prensa Libre reported. He had lost his political immunity on Jan. 14 after he was not re-elected.
Lev Tahor had maintained a small presence in San Juan La Laguna, a village about 90 miles west of Guatemala City, for about six years, but it expanded considerably after a contingent arrived complaining of persecution by Canadian authorities. Tensions appear to have flared after the newcomers sought to impose its practices on the indigenous people.
In 2014 YWN ran an article titled “Cults and the War of the Jewish Magazines” in response to Mishpacha and Ami magazines running articles on Lev Tahor. Mishpacha Magzaine had run a fifteen page “expose” on the group, essentially describing Lev Tahor as a cult that has some serious issues involving medicating children, and behaviors that resemble child abuse. Ami Magazing claimed the exact opposite – and ran the following sentence below their headline “The unjust persecution of a group of pious Jews, and the unsettling silence of the Jewish community.”
Lev Tahor
The group was formed in the 1980s by Shlomo Helbrans, an Israeli citizen. Helbrans moved to the United States in the early 1990s. While living in Brooklyn, Helbrans was convicted and served time in prison for kidnapping 13-year-old Shai Fhima Reuven. The boy had been sent to study with him in preparation for his Bar Mitzva，He was originally sentenced to four to 12 years in prison, but in June 1996 an appeals court reduced the sentence to two to six years. Three days later, he was placed in the work release program for prisoners less than two years away from the possibility of parole, where inmates are freed from prison if they have a job. After protests, he was moved back to prison. Helbrans was released after serving two years, reportedly due to pressure from the local Hasidic community.
The high-profile case drew much attention in the U.S., and gained further attention when Helbrans successfully convinced New York prison authorities to waive their requirement that all prisoners be shaved for a photograph upon entering prison, and to accept a computer-generated image of what he would have looked like clean-shaven instead. After the State Parole Board decided in November 1996 to release Helbrans after two years in prison, the case rose to near scandal with suspicions that the Pataki administration was providing him special treatment.
After his release from prison, He then ran a yeshiva in Monsey, New York. and was eventually deported back to Israel. Soon afterwards he moved to Canada, where in 2003 he was granted refugee status, claiming his life was being threatened in Israel.
Chinese link：http://anticult.kaiwind.com/xingao/2016/201610/18/t20161018_4393512.shtml
