Sawt Falasteen - Guatemalan authorities recover minors taken by sect members

Relatives belonging to the Lev Tahor sect broke into the shelter on Sunday to try to retrieve 160 children and adolescents who had been taken from their farm in a police raid two days earlier, authorities said.

Some of the children were found the same day, and others were recovered by police and officials early Monday amid scuffles with adult sect members on a street in the capital, according to an AFP photographer.

A court is expected to order protective measures for the minors, according to the office of the procurator-general, who acts as the state's attorney.

"Everything was done with a focus on human rights," it said in a statement.

On Friday, police raided a farm occupied by Lev Tahor in Oratorio, southeast of Guatemala City, due to allegations of forced pregnancy, mistreatment of minors and rape, the public prosecutor's office said.

The skeleton of a minor was found during the raid, the office said.

Lev Tahor, which practices an ultra-Orthodox form of Judaism in which women wear black tunics covering them from head to toe, have accused authorities of religious persecution.

Members of the sect settled in Guatemala in 2013. Authorities estimate that the community is made up of roughly 50 families from Guatemala, the United States, Canada and other countries.

S.Barghouti--SF-PST