Prosecutors: Father of missing GA boy was training children to be school shooters
AMALIA, N.M. - The father of a missing Georgia boy and four other adults appeared in court Wednesday, just days after a raid on a New Mexico compound. Their first appearance comes amid new accusations the compound was being used to train children to commit school shootings.
Siraj Ibn Wahhaj, 40, along with his close relative Lucas Allen Morton, 40, and his wife Subhanah, 35, Jany Leveille, 35, Hujrah Wahhaj, 38, one-by-one appeared before a New Mexico judge, all charged with 11 counts of abuse of a child.
Wahhaj was also charged with child abduction out of Clayton County. Morten was also charged with harboring a fugitive.
Wahhaj did not enter a plea on the child abuse charges. Prosecutors asked he be held in jail until trial. The judge said a bond hearing will take place within the next five days.
The other four entered not guilty pleas and are scheduled to have bond hearings on Monday.
RELATED: Court documents show timeline from abduction to raid on N.M. compound
Prosecutors did not bring up the school shooting accusation in court on Wednesday during an initial appearance by the abuse suspects.
Wahhaj was among those arrested in the compound raid that has since resulted in the series of startling revelations on the outskirts of Amalia, a tiny town near the Colorado state line marked by scattered homes and sagebrush.
Authorities said they found the father armed with multiple firearms, including an assault rifle.
Wahhaj appeared in court Wednesday on a warrant from Georgia that seeks his extradition to face a charge of abducting his son from the state last December. He had expressed wanting to perform an exorcism on his son, the warrant said. Clayton County Police also said at a news conference on Tuesday that if authorities did positively identify the body as Abdul, they wouldn't seek extradition due to the murder investigation.
RELATED: Prosecutor: Man at compound trained kids for school shooting
The group arrived in Amalia in December, with enough money to buy groceries and construction supplies, according to Tyler Anderson, a 41-year-old auto mechanic who lives nearby.
Anderson said Tuesday he helped the newcomers install solar panels after they arrived but eventually stopped visiting. Anderson said he met both of the men in the group, but never the women, who authorities have said are the mothers of the 11 children, ages 1 to 15. Anderson did not recall seeing Abdul-ghani, but he said some of the smaller children from the compound turned up to play with children at neighboring properties after the group first arrived.
"We just figured they were doing what we were doing, getting a piece of land and getting off the grid," said Anderson, who moved to New Mexico from Seattle with his wife seven years ago.
As the months passed, however, they stopped seeing the smaller children playing in the area. They also stopped hearing guns fired off at a shooting range on the property, he said.
Jason Badger, who owned the property where the compound was built, said he and his wife had pressed authorities to remove the group after becoming concerned about the children. The group had built the compound on their acreage instead of a neighboring tract owned by Lucas Morton, one of the men arrested during the raid.
"I started to try and kick them off about three months ago and everything I tried to do kept getting knocked down," said Badger said.
RELATED: Dad arrested at 'extremist' N.M. compound planned 'exorcism,' tied to terror-linked imam, report says
A judge dismissed an eviction notice filed by Badger against Morton in June, court records said. The records did not provide further details on the judge's decision.
After the raid, Anderson went over and looked at the property for the first time in months.
"I was flabbergasted from what it had turned into from the last time I saw it," he said.
Authorities said the compound shielded by old tires, wooden pallets and an earthen wall studded with broken glass had been littered with "odorous trash."
The 11 children found living at the encampment - described as a small trailer embedded in the ground - had been without clean water and appeared to have not eaten in days, according to Taos County Sheriff Jerry Hogrefe.
At a news conference in Taos, Hogrefe described FBI surveillance efforts in recent months that included photographs of the compound and interviews. He said the images were shared with the mother of Abdul-ghani but she did not spot her son, and that the photographs never indicated the boy's father was at the compound.
"I had no probable cause to get a search warrant to go onto this property," the sheriff said.
He said FBI officials were invited to the news conference but declined to attend. An FBI spokesman did not immediately return a call seeking comment.
Hogrefe said the "breaking point" in seeking a search warrant came when Georgia authorities received a message that may have originated within the compound that children were starving inside.
It was not clear who sent the message or how it was communicated. Georgia detectives forwarded it to the Taos County Sheriff's Office.
Authorities returned to search the compound after interviews on Friday and Saturday led them to believe the boy might still be on the property.
"We discovered the remains yesterday on Abdul's fourth birthday," Hogrefe said on Tuesday, appearing to fight back tears.
RELATED: New Mexico authorities find remains of young boy
The Associated Press contributed to this report.