Prosecutors in Mexico said on Thursday that they had indicted a leader of the Lev Tahor ultra-Orthodox Jewish cult for human trafficking and child abuse.
Yoel Alter, a 35-year-old dual citizen of Israel and Romania, has been wanted in Mexico since 2022 for arranging marriages of minors to adults, the El País newspaper reported on Friday. He was extradited from Guatemala, where he was arrested earlier this year for human trafficking.
Lev Tahor members have set up small communities in recent years in Canada, the United States, Mexico, Guatemala and Colombia. In those countries, members have faced legal issues over alleged child abuse, pedophilia, kidnapping and neglect, often prompting members to relocate.
The sect is characterized by extreme isolationism and a rejection of modernity. Underage girls are paired by Lev Tahor members in arranged marriages, which violate many countries’ laws against pedophilia and human trafficking, as well as marriage laws.
Mexico has some of the world’s toughest punishments for human trafficking, ranging up to 60 years in jail.
Last year, a federal court in New York sentenced three Lev Tahor members—brothers Yoil Weingarten, Yakov Weingarten and Shmiel Weingarten—to more than 10 years each in prison. They were convicted in March of child exploitation and kidnapping for their role in abducting a girl and a boy, 14 and 12, from their mother’s Catskills home in 2018.
