This Wednesday, Feb. 10, 2016 booking photo provided by the Multnomah County, Ore., Sheriff ” s office shows Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy.
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In April 2014, Bundy led dozens of armed followers who blocked federal agents from seizing his cattle after he had refused to pay grazing fees on public lands for more than two decades.
USA agencies own almost 53 percent of OR land, according to the Congressional Research Service in Washington, D.C. On Feb. 3, a federal grand jury indicted 16 people, including the four who surrendered, the FBI said.
President Theodore Roosevelt created the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in 1908. But in October, a federal judge in OR ruled their terms were too short under US law and ordered them back to prison for about four years each. The last four occupiers of a national wildlife refuge in eastern OR surrendered Thursday.
“This was beautifully executed”, said Brian Levin, a criminal justice professor at California State University, San Bernardino.
Law enforcement also comes away with lessons.
The holdouts were the last remnants of a larger group that seized the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge almost six weeks ago, demanding that the government turn over the land to locals and release two ranchers imprisoned for setting fires. Larry Karl, the assistant special agent in charge of the Portland FBI, said the tents made up the “shantytown” where the last four holdouts at the refuge spent most of their time.
The embattled president of a Catholic university in Emmitsburg, Md., says he’s reinstating two faculty members he fired this week amid an uproar over a plan to identify freshmen most likely to fail and offer them refunds if they chose to leave. Authorities say Sean Anderson, 47; his wife Sandra Anderson, 48, both of Riggins, Idaho; and Jeff Banta, 46, of Yerington, Nevada, were arrested around 9:40 a.m. Thursday.
Arnold on Wednesday night and again on Thursday downplayed his involvement in the standoff – at one point telling The Register-Guard that he was serving merely as a “passive observer and chauffeur” for Fiore, who flew into Portland on Wednesday evening and was driven by Arnold to Central Oregon.
The Andersons and Banta surrendered first on Thursday. The youngest of them, David Fry, had been friends with Finicum, and even helped him publish a novel. “Liberty or death, I take that stance”.
He surrendered after taking a final cigarette and cookie and asking his mediators to shout “Hallelujah”.
“I have never met a man who cares more about the people he serves – who cares more for the community in which he lives”, Breitzing stated.
If the occupation gets people on the right and the left to talk about where we draw the line for rural ranchers, and for Muslim American youth, it might have an ironic outcome. “I am so glad this is over”.
12 other occupiers who were arrested earlier in the month are facing the same charges.
After the occupation ended Thursday, the FBI’s special agent in charge, Greg Bretzing, said Graham had been softening up the last holdouts over the phone.
The refuge will remain closed for weeks as specialists collect evidence and try to determine whether the occupiers damaged any tribal artifacts and burial grounds sacred to the Burns Paiute Tribe, he said.
It involved self-styled Bundy militia supporters pointing military-style weapons at federal agents trying to enforce a court order to round up Bundy cattle from federal rangeland near his ranch. The FBI video appeared to show Lavoy Finicum go for the loaded pistol he carried after he had evaded police and nearly run down an FBI agent.
A number of the occupiers were relating their account of events as they unfolded via an independent Internet broadcast, “Revolution Radio”, that is known to be sympathetic to the occupation.
Like the others arrested, the four final occupiers are charged with conspiracy to impede federal employees, a felony that would cost them their right to carry guns if convicted.
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Mount St. Mary’s University President Simon Newsman said in a statement Friday afternoon that philosophy professor Thane Naberhaus and law instructor Edward Egan would be reinstated immediately. He also faces weapons charges.
