One of the five suspects accused of child abuse at the New Mexico compound, where 11 children were found living in squalid conditions earlier this month, has been transferred to the custody of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), according to the Taos County Sheriff Jerry Hogrefe.
Hogrefe said on Aug. 14 that Jany Leveille, the wife of another suspect Siraj Wahhaj, had been moved to federal custody. He did not give further details about the transfer, reported
Fox News.
The sheriff added that the other suspects are still in custody. Siraj, 39, is still being held on an outstanding warrant from Georgia for a kidnapping charge while the other three suspects—Subhannah Wahhaj, Lucas Morton, and Hujrah Wahhaj—are still not released yet pending the fulfillment of their bail conditions, the news station said.
All five suspects are accused of training the children to use
firearms “in furtherance of a conspiracy to commit school shootings” and were each charged with 11 counts of felony child abuse. Siraj was also charged in the alleged abduction of his son from his mother’s Atlanta home last December.
Eleven children, aged between 1 and 15, were found malnourished and living in squalid conditions on a property in the New Mexico desert. The
sheriff described that the children looked like “third-world-country refugees” and had only “dirty rags for clothing” when first discovered.
Sheriff Jerry Hogrefe said in a
statement on Aug. 4 that officials discovered that the “occupants were most likely heavily armed and considered extremist of the Muslim belief.”
“We all gave the kids our water and what snacks we had—it was the saddest living conditions and poverty I have seen,” he said.
After searching the compound, authorities believe that Siraj, 39, was
conducting weapons training with assault rifles with the children at the compound near the Colorado border. They found him armed with multiple firearms and uncovered a suspected firing range on the property.
According to Lovelace, Siraj told police at the time that he had the guns because he worked for an executive security business and that he was going on a camping trip in New Mexico.
Judge Grants Suspects Bond
In a hearing on Aug. 13,
prosecutors told the court that another child, 3-year-old Abdul-Ghani Wahhaj, who has been missing since December, allegedly died in February this year during a ritualistic religious ceremony aimed to “cast out demonic spirits.”
“It was a religious ritual carried out on Abdul-Ghani, a ritual intended to cast out demonic spirits,” Taos County Prosecutor John Lovelace said.
One of the children, 15, told investigators that a suspect, who has since been arrested for child abuse at the compound, told him that the 3-year-old would “return as Jesus” to identify teachers and government institutions as targets for them to attack, according to
NBC.
“They were awaiting for Abdul-Ghani to be resurrected to let them know which government institutions to get rid of,” Lovelace said.
District Judge Sarah Backus
set the bail at $20,000 for each defendant and ordered them to wear ankle monitors and meet weekly with their attorneys. Backus said she was not satisfied that the defendants would be dangerous if released awaiting trial.
Backus was appointed in 2011. Before that, she was a deputy attorney general in California and deputy public defender in San Francisco. She’s a lifelong Democrat and the New Mexico Democratic Party appointed her to head election protection efforts in 2008 and 2010,
The Taos News reported.
The USCIS is the federal agency that oversees lawful immigration, according to its
website.
Reuters and The Epoch Times’ Petr Svab contributed to this report.
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