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Four Members of ‘Extremist Jewish Sect’ Charged with Kidnapping Two Children

The children were safely recovered this morning.

Four members of “extremist Jewish sect” Lev Tahor were arrested Friday and charged with kidnapping two children in upstate New York, the Department of Justice said. U.S. Attorney's Office in New York's Southern District charged Nachman Helbrans, Mayer Rosner, Aron Rosner, and Jacob Rosner with kidnapping two children from Woodbridge, New York and transporting them to Mexico, with the eventual goal of returning them to the sect’s base in Guatemala. The children’s mother had fled the Guatemala compound six weeks before the kidnapping, reportedly fearing for the safety of her children, and gained legal custody of all six. The release notes that “Public news reports indicate that children in Lev Tahor are often subject to physical, sexual, and emotional abuse.” The suspects are accused of engaging in a “terrifying kidnapping of two children in the middle of the night, taking the children across the border to Mexico.”  The children were recovered Friday in the Mexican town of Tenango del Air, and will soon be returned to New York morning following a nearly three-week search, U.S. Attorney Geoffrey S. Berman said in the release.