Lev Tahor Leader Lied in Refugee Application to Canada: Report
Women in the Lev Tahor sect are forced to wear a burqa-like uniform that has led some to call the group the Jewish Taliban. Image by Haaretz
The leader of the controversial ultra-Orthodox sect Lev Tahor may have used false evidence to gain refugee status in Canada, a Canadian documentary reported.
Ottawa’s granting of refugee status to Rabbi Shlomo Helbrans was based in part on testimony paid for by the sect, a boy involved at the hearing told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s program, “the fifth estate.”
The documentary, which aired Feb. 28, alleges that Shai Fima, the boy who was at the center of Helbrans’ 1996 kidnapping conviction in the U.S., was paid $5,000 to appear on videotape at Helbran’s hearing, denying that he was kidnapped and saying the rabbi was being unfairly persecuted.
Helbrans argued successfully at his 2003 hearing that as an anti-Zionist, he would be persecuted if returned to Israel. He was admitted as a refugee despite his American criminal conviction for kidnapping, for which he served two years in jail, and was then deported to his native Israel. Fima, who did not want to appear on camera, is quoted as saying he was not kidnapped.
Helbrans told the CBC that Fima’s claim he was paid by the sect is ”absolutely false and a lie.” Another sect member said the Lev Tahor did pay for Fima’s airplane ticket from Israel to Canada, but not for his testimony.
Helbrans’ claim included testimony from a man who is now the spokesperson for Lev Tahor, whose members fled Quebec last fall and have settled in rural Ontario. Uriel Goldman testified that as a young intelligence soldier in the Israel Defense Forces, he was ordered to spy on Helbrans.
The IDF has no record of Goldman, the program reported. When questioned, Goldman said he did not want to talk about his testimony at the refugee hearing. ”I know that Israel is watching very carefully,” he says in the documentary. “I think you can understand. I don’t want to receive one day a bullet from a Mossad agent if it gets ugly.”
Sect members are appealing an Ontario court decision to place 13 Lev Tahor children in foster care amid allegations of physical abuse, neglect, underage marriages and forced medication.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.
If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
