BURNS, Ore.— One of the last holdouts in the armed takeover of an Oregon wildlife refuge said Thursday the remaining five occupiers will leave if they receive assurances none of them will be arrested.
In a video posted on the YouTube channel “DefendYourBase” that the group has been using to issue updates during the nearly 4-week-old siege, a speaker believed to be David Fry said the occupiers have been told by authorities that “out of five people left here, four of us are allowed to leave.”
The FBI had no immediate comment on the demand. It has said only that it is trying to “empty the refuge of the armed occupiers in the safest way possible.”
The FBI has set up checkpoints around the refuge that was taken over on Jan. 2 by ranchers and others demanding the federal government turn public lands over to local control.
The group’s leader, Ammon Bundy, and 10 others have been arrested over the past couple of days, most of them in a traffic stop Tuesday night that erupted in gunfire and left one follower dead.
Fry has been posting frequent online updates from the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. In the video, a speaker whose face was not visible said an FBI official told him one of the remaining occupiers faces a felony count of conspiracy to impede federal officers from carrying out their duties through force, intimidation or threats.
