A cadre of armed men from a militia group called the Rise of the Moors shut down a highway outside of Boston on Saturday morning after allegedly refusing to comply with police orders and taking off into the woods with guns.
The group says on their website that they’re dedicated to “educating new Moors and influencing our Elders” and, in YouTube videos of the incident, they claimed they were only trying to travel peacefully to their “private land” to camp and “train” on Saturday. CBS Boston reported that they were headed from Rhode Island to Maine.
According to Massachusetts State Police, a trooper saw two cars on the side of the highway at about 2 a.m. with hazard lights on, attempting to add gas to their tanks.
When the officer stopped to assist, they noticed the group of men were wearing military gear and had a lot of guns. The trooper asked for driver’s licenses and gun licenses but the men allegedly refused to provide any and refused to put down their weapons. The trooper called for backup but some of the men fled, police said.
In a livestream video on the group’s YouTube page, titled “Peaceful,” a member of the militia, dressed in camo gear, said they were traveling with gas tanks to refuel their cars so they could avoid “making any unnecessary stops.” He said they did not want to “stop and alert or alarm the public.”
He claimed they had not violated any laws as they were legally allowed to own guns in the state from which they traveled.
He said they were approached by a trooper and he asked for a sergeant and what the probable cause was. The sergeant allegedly said he did not know. “I have that on my body camera,” the man said.
“We do not intend to be hostile, we do not intend to be aggressive,” he said, adding that they are not “anti-police” or “Black-identity extremists“Our nation has a treaty with your government,” the man said, gesturing to another man holding what looks like a Moroccan flag.
“We’re not anti-government, we’re not anti-police and we’re willing to give them any information they need so that way we can continue with our peaceful journey,” he continued.
The Southern Poverty Law Center says that several organizations and lone people have identified with the Moorish sovereign citizen movement in the U.S. since the 1990s. The movement is associated with the anti-government sovereign citizens movement, and some Moorish sovereigns have come into conflict with federal and state governments over their refusal to obey laws. They believe that African Americans “constitute an elite class within American society with special rights,” SPLC writes.
“Their self-professed leader wanted very much known their ideology is not anti-government,” State Police Col. Christopher Mason said in a Saturday morning briefing. “Our investigation will provide us more insight into what their motivation, what their ideology is.”
A section of I-95 was closed in both directions and a shelter in place order was issued for residents in Wakefield and Reading. Large trucks were also brought in to block the highway. The closure was still in place by mid-morning Saturday in what police called a “highly dynamic and evolving situation.”
“We continue to engage the suspects in conversation in an effort to de-escalate the situation on 95 and bring it to a peaceful end,” state police said in a tweet at 9:30 a.m. EDT.
By 10:30 a.m. police said all nine men who were on the highway had been taken into custody by a Special Tactical Operations Team. “We will now conduct sweeps of their 2 vehicles and woods,” they said in a tweet.
Is this a great country or what? Everyone can have their own nutty, conspiracy-addled militias.