Deputies took 11 malnourished children into protective custody and found the body of a 12th child during the Aug. 3 raid here, just south of the Colorado border. Authorities said they also found multiple firearms and little food on the desolate patch of dirt the group had laid claim to, using a partly buried trailer ringed by old tires, wooden pallets and garbage.
One of the children later told a foster parent that he had been trained to carry out school shootings, officials said.
Defendants Lucas Allen Morton, 40; Jany Leveille, 35; Siraj Ibn Wahhaj, 40; Hujrah Wahhaj, 37; and Subhannah Wahhaj, 35; appeared at the hearing before District Court Judge Sarah Backus.
All the defendants and the children are relatives of a well-known Brooklyn imam, Siraj Wahhaj, a fact that has ignited allegations from far-right groups that the compound was part of a conspiracy by Muslim extremists.
Taos County Sheriff Jerry Hogrefe told reporters in early August that the suspects were “extremists of the Muslim faith” but has declined to elaborate.
The five adults and their 12 children disappeared from the Atlanta suburbs in December 2017. But only Abdul-Ghani Wahhaj, 3, was officially reported as missing because his mother told police that his father had taken him, and that the boy suffers from serious seizures and requires regular medication.
Hogrefe has come under fire for failing to enter the compound earlier. Jason and Tanya Badger, who own the land where the group had camped out, said they had raised alarm bells repeatedly since January after noticing the squatters and filing for their eviction.
The Badgers said that law enforcement officers from the sheriff’s department and the New Mexico State Police visited the site and spoke to members of the group at the entrance to the compound on at least two occasions in January and February to address the Badgers’ eviction concerns. But the couple said police never entered the property, despite having the Badgers’ permission to do so.
A neighbor, Kenny Jenkins, said the family arrived last December, and he helped them dig a hole for their travel trailer to protect it from the wind. He said he and other neighbors also provided the group with construction materials, solar panels and water.
“Right before Christmas, we had a small hat full of money, and we spent half of it on those guys,” Jenkins said. “We bought them a propane heater and a couple of little tanks because one of the little kids said, ‘Man, it’s cold out here.’ We helped them out in every little way possible.”
Morton, one of the defendants, sometimes borrowed tools and said that he wanted to build a sustainable home constructed from recycled materials.
“We didn’t question anything, because they’re doing the same thing we did. They came here to live a subsistence lifestyle,” he said.
But after Ramadan ended in June, Jenkins said, the group blocked off the entrance to their compound with tires and no-trespassing signs.
A Taos County spokesman, Steve Fuhlendorf, said last week that the FBI had the compound under aerial surveillance since May, and Ashanti Marbury, a spokeswoman for the Clayton County Police Department in Georgia, said police there were in touch with the FBI and Taos County officials for “a few months” before the raid.
Hogrefe said after the raid that the FBI “didn’t feel there was enough probable cause to get on the property,” despite the surveillance. And the criminal complaint makes no mention of evidence collected through that surveillance that might support the claim that the children were training with weapons.
The FBI has declined to comment on the case or acknowledge involvement in the investigation.
Police in Georgia said the raid occurred after they received a desperate “communication” that originated in the compound asking for food. The imam said that his daughter Subhannah had sent the message to a family friend and that the family then passed the location on to the police.
Jason Badger said he discovered a shotgun and a pistol stashed in a cargo van on the property after police had conducted the raid. He pointed to what appeared to be a child’s drawing of a human silhouette target that was peppered with bullet holes at a makeshift shooting range at the compound. Boxes of ammunition and instruction manuals for semiautomatic pistols and a rifle were left at the scene.
Hogrefe has declined to address most of the criticism, but said he was unable to legally enter the compound before the Aug. 3 raid, and that the search warrant then limited police in what they could take. Over the weekend, he walked out of a CNN interview when the reporter pressed him on whether he could have saved a child’s life.
In court on Monday, Hogrefe mentioned tunnels for the first time, saying police found a sniper rifle at the scene. He said that Wahhaj was armed with an assault rifleand several handguns, but that the arrests transpired peacefully.
The child’s body was found wrapped in cloth and plastic at the entrance to one of those tunnels, Hogrefe said.
