One, Robert “LaVoy” Finicum, who officials say reached for a weapon, was shot dead.
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Eleven of the 16 indicted by the grand jury had previously been arrested on federal charges related to the occupation.
Bundy said in the audio recording, “Go home, Oregon State Police, you have already killed enough” and “Go home, FBI, it is time to end this”.
The holdouts had been demanding they be allowed to leave the refuge without facing charges.
He called the occupation a “needed action to show government officials that people will not be complacent when they prosecute and bully good families like the Hammonds”.
Bundy said he is in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day and hasn’t spoken yet to his father, Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, who sent a letter to the Harney County sheriff Monday saying “We the People” will retain possession of the refuge.
In a packed courtroom on Friday, January 29, hundreds of miles away of where the protestors took up refuge, prosecutors argued the militia were “flight risks” given their well-documented criminal activities and anti-fovernemnt statements over the past month.
“The Government’s claim that allowing Ms. Cox to associate with “like minded people” might cause problems (as yet, unidentified) is, at best, a generalized worry and nothing approaching the order of a compelling governmental interest”, Harris said in the motion.
Ward had repeatedly asked the occupiers to leave and, after Finicum’s death, said in emotional remarks at a news conference that it “didn’t have to happen” and again said he wanted “everybody in this illegal occupation to move on”. “My client is requesting permission to…enter the church, attend the church service, and simply to go home”.
The group was denied bail last week after a judge ruled that the Bundy brothers, in particular, posed flight risks.
Two of those arrested have since been released on condition that they wear electronic tracking devices while awaiting trial, leaving 10 of the former protesters, including the Bundys, still in custody.
On Wednesday, Hay called the decision not to have Payne and others in court “an unfortunate beginning”. She said she wasn’t sure what lies ahead.
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Berman reported from Washington.
