Nearly twenty children and adults from the Lev Tahor extremist sect have escaped from a center in Chiapas, where they were being held, as shown in images to which EL PAÍS has had access.
The group of worshipers was in the custody of Mexican authorities after a raid on an ultra-Orthodox community camp near the Guatemalan border last week.
The National System for the Integral Development of Families (DIF), the institution responsible for the facilities, has not commented on the incident.
In the images, boys and girls, dressed in the sect's characteristic costumes (dark suits for men and tunics that cover women from head to toe), are seen leaving the DIF care center in Huixtla, a Chiapas community. about 50 kilometers from the border with Guatemala.
In the videos, the minors are shown walking together outside the facilities, while in other recordings released by the local press, some are seen directly pushing the guards who were at the entrance and getting into trucks.
The events occurred early this Thursday.
Mexican and Israeli agents launched a joint operation last week against the Orthodox group, after receiving complaints from former members of human trafficking, sexual abuse and child abuse.
In the raid, two religious community leaders were charged by order of a Mexican judge and transferred to a jail in Chiapas.
The two defendants have been identified as Moshe Yosef Rosner, a US national, and Menachen Enden Alter, holding an Israeli passport.
The objective of the operation, which was planned for almost two years, was to free the children and adults of the cult, apprehend the leaders and rescue a three-year-old boy who was wanted by Israel Amir, a former member who fled from the group and had been prevented from contact with her son.
In recent days, the members of the community that remained in the DIF of Huixtla rioted and attacked the guards.
They complained about the conditions in which they were housed and demanded to be returned to their families.
Other followers accused a "religious persecution".
Lev Tahor, whose name translates from Hebrew as pure heart, was founded in Israel in the 1980s and since then has had a history of scandals and accusations of kidnapping, human trafficking, forced marriages and physical and sexual abuse.
The group has been declared a "dangerous cult" by Israeli authorities and has faced investigations in the United States, Canada, Mexico and Guatemala over its treatment of its younger members.
The Israeli press dubs the organization the "Jewish Taliban" for its extremist practices, rejected by virtually all factions of Judaism, even the most orthodox currents.
Sources close to the operation warn that among the escaped members there are children with American, Canadian, Israeli and Guatemalan passports, a reflection of the group's pilgrimage through the American continent after being targeted by the authorities.
They also fear that the minors have been taken back to Guatemala, where most of the group has lived since 2014, and that the escape has thrown away a couple of years of planning to hit the group.
According to the first reports, it is estimated that the sect has had this settlement in the Chiapas jungle, about 20 kilometers from the border city of Tapachula, for at least six months.
The Mexican authorities have not yet clarified under what circumstances the members of the group have left the center.
The National Migration Institute of Mexico has indicated that it is not involved in managing the issue and that it corresponds to the DIF.
For his part, a DIF spokesman has said that he is corroborating the information.
Just last April, Nachman Helbrans and Mayer Rosner, the two highest officials of the extremist organization, were sentenced to 12 years in prison in the United States for the kidnapping of two children, who were then 14 and 12 years old.
The kidnapped minors were nephews of Helbrans, leader and son of the founder of the sect, and were taken from the north of the State of New York to the metropolitan area of Mexico City, where they were found by Mexican and American agents.
Since then, the congregation, marked by secrecy and strict control over its members, has been practically on the loose and has been located in almost a dozen countries in America, Eastern Europe and the Middle East.
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