In the indictment, prosecutors say the militants knowingly conspired “to prevent by force, intimidation, and threats, officers and employees of the US Fish and Wildlife Service … from discharging the duties of their office at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge”.
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The leader of an armed standoff at a federal wildlife refuge in OR has been indicted along with several of his followers, including the four still holed up at the site, authorities said Thursday.
“Government officials chose to end our educational efforts with attacks of force and it appears they attempt to do it again”, said Bundy in an audio-recorded statement made public by his attorneys.
As the occupation drags on, additional officers have been sent to the Klamath Basin National Wildlife Refuge Complex that straddles the Oregon-California border, as well as to the Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge in Nevada and Modoc National Wildlife Refuge in northern California. Finicum had been called “the tarp man” after spending a night under a tarp at Malheur National Wildlife Refuge when he feared an imminent raid by officials.
Preserves throughout the USA have also been placed on a heightened alert.
The list of those charged includes the four remaining militants at the refuge as well as Ryan Bundy, Ryan Payne and others.
In a graphic look at the confrontation between police and armed occupiers in OR, newly released Federal Bureau of Investigation video shows the shooting death of LaVoy F… The FBI says Finicum was going for a gun in his jacket pocket, but Bundy supporters say his death was not justified.
“They’ve kind of put the call out nationwide”, Alldredge said. “This is what you get when government officials ignore the people”, Bundy said in the message, arguing that the occupiers had “exhausted all prudent measures to get government officials to investigate the abuses to the Hammond family”.
Their immediate fate has been clouded by the four holdouts among the group, who joined the protest after it started but have so far refused to leave the refuge.
He is the son of Cliven Bundy, a Nevada rancher who has been involved in a high-profile dispute over grazing cattle on federal land in that state.
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The indictment, returned by a federal grand jury in Portland on Wednesday and unsealed on Thursday, supersedes an earlier criminal complaint in the case.
