A federal court in New York on Wednesday found two top leaders of the extremist Jewish group Lev Tahor guilty of child sex abuse and kidnapping.
Nachman Helbrans and Mayor Rosner face a minimum sentence of 10 years in prison and a maximum sentence of life imprisonment if convicted. The sentencing of the case in Federal Southern District of New York Court would later be completed by a judge.
“Nachman Helbrans and Meyer Rosner kidnapped two children from their mother in the middle of the night to return a 14-year-old girl to illicit sex with an adult man. Today’s ruling makes clear that our office – and Our law enforcement partners – will not stop us from achieving justice for victims of child sexual abuse,” said US Attorney Damian Williams.
Around 2017, the Helbrans arranged for the girl, her niece, to “marry” an adult in the group. The girl was engaged to the man when she was 13 and he was 19, although they were never legally married as such a union would be illegal.
The pair then “started having sex with the goal of proliferating immediately,” The US Department of Justice said in a statement, in line with the general practice of the group.
Lev Tahor led, including Helbran and Rosner, “to encourage young brides to have sex with their husbands, to tell people outside Lev Tahor that they were not married, to pretend to be grown-ups, and to go to the hospital.” There was a need to deliver the children inside their homes instead, to hide the young age of the mothers from the public,” the statement said.
The girl’s mother fled the group’s compound in Guatemala in 2018 fearing the safety of her children and fled to the US. A Brooklyn court gave her sole custody of the children and barred a leader of the children’s father, Lev Tahor, from communicating with them.
Example: A young woman and member of the Lev Tahor community in the Canadian city of Chatham, Ontario, November 29, 2013. (Rick Madonic/Toronto Star via Getty Images, JTA)
Helbran and Rosner, who are both US citizens, then hatch a plan to return the 14-year-old girl to her 20-year-old husband. In December of 2018, they kidnapped her and her 12-year-old brother from their mother in Woodridge Village, New York. They smuggled children into Mexico and crossed the US border to reunite the girl with her adult “husband”.
They used pseudonyms, drop phones, forged travel documents and encrypted software to execute the scheme, the statement said.
The children were recovered in Mexico, and the kidnappers were arrested, after a three-week search involving hundreds of law enforcement personnel, and returned to New York. Lev Tahor made additional attempts to kidnap children again in 2019 and 2021. many others have been Arrested And charged up If.
Helbran, 39, and Rosner, 45, all were convicted of conspiring to transport a minor with intent to engage in criminal sexual activity, illegal sexual conduct, and traveling with intent to engage in international parental abduction. was convicted of the charges.
Lev Tahor, an extremist ultra-Orthodox sect, was founded in Jerusalem in the 1980s by the father of Nachman Helbrans, Rabbi Shlomo Helbrans. The group fled to Canada and then to Guatemala in 2014 after a thorough investigation by Canadian authorities for alleged child abuse and child marriage. The younger Helbran took over the reins of the group in 2017 when his father drowned in Mexico and Rosner served as a “top lieutenant,” according to court documents.
The group’s name means “pure heart” in Hebrew.
Rabbi Shlomo Helbrans, the founder of Lev Tahor, leaves the state Supreme Court in Brooklyn, New York, after a hearing on April 13, 1994. (AP Photo/Betsy Herzog)
group’s tricks, tricks and plans Everything is blurry. It is believed that it is trying to go to Iran via Kurdistan. Members of the anti-Semitic group applied for political asylum in Iran in 2018. Documents presented in a US federal court in 2019 showed that the cult’s leaders requested asylum from the Islamic republic and took an oath of allegiance to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Last month, Guatemalan officials two buses stopped The group’s members were taken across the border to Mexico, from where they were reportedly planning to reach Iran for asylum.
Guatemala has also barred members from leaving the country en route to Iran at the request of Israeli and US officials, who fear the group’s members could be used as a bargaining chip by Tehran. Kurdish authorities reportedly detained some members of the group and deported them to Turkey.
Members of the Lev Tahor sect prepare to depart from Guatemala City’s La Aurora International Airport on a visit to Iraqi Kurdistan in October 2021 (courtesy)
The group has been described as a cult and as “Jewish Taliban”, as women and girls over the age of 3 are required to wear long black robes that cover their entire bodies, with only their faces exposed. There are. Men spend most of their day in prayer and study specific parts of the Torah. The group follows an extreme, idiosyncratic reading of the kosher dietary laws.
“Marriages” between minors and elder members are common.
Membership of the group is estimated to be 200–300 people, including adults and dozens of children born in the group.