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(New York Jewish Week) — Three members of the extremist Jewish Lev Tahor non secular cult have been convicted of kidnapping two youngsters by a New York court docket on Wednesday.
Brothers Yoil Weingarten, Yakov Weingarten and Shmiel Weingarten have been convicted of kid exploitation and kidnapping for his or her function in abducting a 14-year-old lady and her 12-year-old brother from their mom’s dwelling within the Catskills in New York in 2018.
The brothers have been the final of 9 suspects within the case to face trial. All have been convicted or pleaded responsible, together with Lev Tahor’s chief, Nachman Helbrans, who was sentenced to 12 years in jail in 2022 for kidnapping and transporting minors for sexual functions and different costs. Lev Tahor means “pure coronary heart” in Hebrew.
“With this verdict, all 9 Lev Tahor leaders and operatives charged for these heinous crimes have been held accountable,” the U.S. Legal professional’s Workplace within the Southern District of New York mentioned in a press release, calling the defendants’ conduct “unthinkable.”
“Whether or not within the identify of faith or another perception system, subjecting youngsters to bodily, sexual, or emotional abuse won’t ever be tolerated,” the assertion mentioned.
The brothers have been convicted of all costs, together with worldwide parental kidnapping, coercion or enticement of a minor feminine, and conspiracy to defraud america. The sentencing will happen within the coming months.
Lev Tahor is a secretive group and little is thought about its internal workings. The group adheres to an excessive interpretation of Jewish legislation that severely restricts its members’ contact with the surface world in addition to on a regular basis facets of life, comparable to their weight loss plan and gown. A bunch known as Lev Tahor Survivors, which opposes the cult’s actions, has estimated its membership at a number of hundred individuals. Lev Tahor is led by a core group, with the remaining being held principally towards their will, the opposition group has mentioned.
The kidnapping case threw the group into turmoil, and since Helbrans’ arrest some members have sought a brand new dwelling, turning up within the Balkans and Morocco. However the majority seems to have remained in Guatemala, the place the group has been based mostly since round 2013, following stints in Israel and Canada throughout which they tried to flee authorities oversight.
Within the kidnapping case, in December 2018 on Shabbat and Hanukkah, members of the cult took the 2 youngsters from the city of Woodridge, New York late at evening and, utilizing disguises and fraudulent identification paperwork, smuggled the brother and sister throughout state traces into Mexico to reunite the lady with the grownup man they thought of her “husband.”
Lev Tahor had a apply of marriage ceremony underage women to grownup males and forcing them to have intercourse with their “husbands,” U.S. investigators have mentioned. The lady on this case was 13 when she was married to Jacob Rosner, then 18, one other defendant within the case. The unlawful marriage was by no means formally acknowledged.
The youngsters have been recovered in Mexico after a weeks-long search involving a whole lot of investigators and legislation enforcement personnel, and returned to New York.
The youngsters’s mom fled the cult to guard her youngsters after the lady’s marriage to Rosner, ending up in New York and gaining custody of her three youngsters. The defendants within the case claimed she had wrongfully eliminated the youngsters from the neighborhood and that they have been making an attempt a rescue.
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The mom is the sister of Nachman Helbrans, the cult chief, who took the reins of the group after his father and Lev Tahor’s founder, Shlomo Helbrans, drowned in a river in Mexico in 2017. She pleaded with the decide to point out Nachman mercy at his sentencing in 2022.
The three brothers who have been convicted this week have been extradited to america from Guatemala in 2022. They have been held within the Westchester County Jail and tried within the U.S. Southern District Court docket in White Plains.
Shmiel Weingarten participated within the kidnapping, whereas his brothers Yakov and Yoil helped plan the kidnapping and met the youngsters in Mexico. The three brothers have been all leaders of the group, prosecutors mentioned.
Lev Tahor Survivors instructed the New York Jewish Week that the Weingartens’ conviction “ends an abusive chapter that leaves a lot of the cult management in jail.”
“The void opens the best alternative to dissolve the cult as soon as and for all,” the group mentioned. “We hope the authorities handle to chop off communication between the management behind bars and the members nonetheless trapped in Guatemala. In the event that they try this, Lev Tahor will quickly be a darkish speck of historical past.”
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