Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Associated Press
DETROIT
Nine suspected members of a Christian militia group that was girding for battle with the Antichrist were charged Monday with plotting to kill a police officer and slaughter scores more by bombing the funeral — all in hopes of touching off an uprising against the U.S. government.
Seven men and one woman believed to be part of the Michigan-based Hutaree were arrested over the weekend in raids in Michigan, Indiana and Ohio. The ninth suspect was arrested Monday night after a search in rural southern Michigan.
FBI agents moved quickly against Hutaree because its members were planning an attack sometime in April, prosecutors said. Authorities seized guns in the raids but would not say whether they found any explosives.
The arrests have dealt “a severe blow to a dangerous organization that today stands accused of conspiring to levy war against the United States,” Attorney General Eric Holder said.
Authorities said the arrests underscored the dangers of homegrown right-wing extremism of the sort seen in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing that killed 168 people. In an indictment unsealed Monday, prosecutors said the group began military-style training in the Michigan woods in 2008, learning how to shoot guns and make and set off bombs.
David Brian Stone, 44, of Clayton, Mich., and one of his sons were identified as the ringleaders of the group. Stone, who was known as “Captain Hutaree,” organized the group in paramilitary fashion, and members were assigned secret names, prosecutors said. Ranks ranged from “radoks” to “gunners,” according to the group’s Web site.
“It started out as a Christian thing,” Stone’s ex-wife, Donna Stone, told The Associated Press. “You go to church. You pray. You take care of your family. I think David started to take it a little too far.”
Donna Stone said her ex-husband pulled her son into the movement. Another of David Stone’s sons was arrested Monday night at home about 30 miles from the site of the weekend raid where he was found with five other adults and a child.
Joshua Matthew Stone surrendered at about 8 p.m., said Andrew Arena, head of the FBI’s field office in Detroit. Stone’s friends and relatives had recorded messages, urging him to surrender, that the FBI played over loudspeakers outside the home before he and the others came out willingly, Arena said.
“We’re guessing he’s been in there at least a day,” Arena said.
The other people in the house were taken to a church a few miles away that had been set up as a command post for law enforcement. At least two were brought in handcuffs. The child was 1 or 2 years old, Arena said.
Other details, including whether those in the house had weapons or were affiliated with Hutaree, weren’t immediately released.
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