Jonathan Emmanuel Cardona Castillo, 23, a leader of the Jewish Lev Tahor sect was arrested by El Salvadoran authorities last week, the Public Prosecutor’s Office of Guatemala announced on Jan. 2 in a Facebook video post.
Guatemala has initiated proceedings for the extradition of Castillo to face justice, said Juan Francisco Reyes, an attorney in the department concerned with human trafficking in the Prosecutor’s Office.
Interpol issued an international arrest warrant for Castillo late last month. Castillo is wanted by Guatemala on charges including human trafficking, rape and abuse of minors, the international police organization said in a Red Notice.
Castillo is a citizen of Guatemala and El Salvador and speaks Hebrew and Spanish.
Lev Tahor, or “Pure Heart” in Hebrew, is a fundamentalist Jewish cult that Guatemalan authorities say engages in child sexual abuse, pedophilia and rape. The organization, described as the “Jewish Taliban,” was founded in Jerusalem in 1988 by the anti-Zionist Rabbi Shlomo Helbrans. The cult follows an extreme fundamentalist form of Jewish practice including head-to-toe black coverings for girls and women from the age of three.
Its members moved from Israel to the U.S. and back before heading to Canada, Guatemala and Mexico, often fleeing child welfare agencies. They have also stayed in several Eastern European countries as well as Turkey for shorter periods. In 2022, Mexican authorities arrested a sect leader near the Guatemalan border and removed women and children from a compound.
Israel’s Ministry of Welfare and Social Affairs sent a delegation last week to Guatemala to help local authorities counter the cult. The delegation, which includes senior professionals, will share knowledge and experience gained treating cult victims and their families, Arutz 7 reported.
“The Ministry of Social Affairs has been following the affair of the Lev Tahor cult for about a decade,” said ministry director-general Yinon Aharoni. “Sharing professional knowledge with Guatemalan authorities is another important step in our ongoing efforts to assist victims of the cult and prevent further harm to children,” he said.
On Dec. 20, Guatemalan security authorities raided the Lev Tahor cult compound. “The operation led to the rescue of 160 minors who were allegedly being abused by a member of the Lev Tahor sect,” Interior Minister Francisco Jiménez tweeted after the raid on the property, a farmhouse located in the municipality of Oratorio, some 37 miles southwest of the capital.
The raid was the most aggressive action to date by Guatemalan authorities against the Lev Tahor community, which has attracted legal scrutiny since establishing a presence in the Central American country in 2013.
The cult has moved through several countries, and even attempted to reach Iran, before returning to Guatemala, according to Ilan Sharif, the director of the Israeli ministry’s Cult Victims Department.
The radical group has been accused of child and sexual abuse charges in several countries. Sect leaders have described the investigations as “religious persecution,” AFP reported.
In March, a New York court sentenced three leaders of Lev Tahor—Yoil Weingarten, Yakov Weingarten and Shmiel Weingarten—for child exploitation and kidnapping two children from the Catskills home of their mother in 2018.
