Geisha Kow­lessar

Nine mem­bers of Lev Tahor, an ul­tra-Or­tho­dox Jew­ish sect from Que­bec in Cana­da, who were de­tained on Mon­day at Pi­ar­co Air­port were ex­pect­ed to be de­port­ed back to Cana­da.Last No­vem­ber the mem­bers fled to a town near Wind­sor, On­tario, Mon­tre­al's CBC news re­port­ed.The re­port said two fam­i­lies were sched­uled to ap­pear in a Chatham-Kent, On­tario court yes­ter­day to learn the re­sults of their ap­peal of an ear­li­er court judg­ment that 14 chil­dren from the sect must be re­turned to Que­bec and placed in fos­ter care.

Last month, an On­tario judge up­held a Que­bec rul­ing or­der­ing the chil­dren in the Lev Tahor sect to be sur­ren­dered to child wel­fare au­thor­i­ties. Af­ter be­ing de­nied an ap­peal by a Que­bec court, the group re­quest­ed an ap­peal to an On­tario court.

This came af­ter the Que­bec and On­tario provin­cial po­lice forces raid­ed the Lev Tahor homes in Chatham, it was re­port­ed. Que­bec's Youth Pro­tec­tion Ser­vices al­leged that the chil­dren liv­ing in the sect were med­icat­ed with mela­tonin to con­trol their be­hav­iour, could not do ba­sic maths and were mar­ried off as young as 14. A re­port in the Toron­to Sun said the group–three adults and six chil­dren–were in­ter­cept­ed and de­tained in T&T while try­ing to catch a flight to Mex­i­co.

An im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cial was quot­ed as say­ing the group end­ed up in T&T be­cause they had missed their con­nect­ing flight. The of­fi­cial said it was by co­in­ci­dence they were de­tained, be­cause lo­cal im­mi­gra­tion au­thor­i­ties were un­aware of what was go­ing on in Cana­da. In a press re­lease is­sued from the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry last night it said the group came to T&T via a West Jet flight and was in­ter­viewed by im­mi­gra­tion au­thor­i­ties who dis­cov­ered in­con­sis­ten­cies in their re­spons­es.

They were then told by im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cers that they could not to trav­el on to Guatemala."The group sub­se­quent­ly em­ployed the ser­vices of a lo­cal at­tor­ney, Mr Farah Ma­sai, who be­gan ad­vo­cat­ing their con­cerns with the air­line and im­mi­gra­tion au­thor­i­ties."All mea­sures of at­tempts to ac­com­mo­date the group at a ho­tel of their choice and to al­so en­sure that they were prop­er­ly at­tend­ed to were re­fused by the re­li­gious group," the re­lease added.