Federal judge tosses Rise of the Moors militia's $70 million 'defamation and discrimination' lawsuit against Massachusetts state police
A federal judge has dismissed a 'defamation' lawsuit brought by 11 men arrested after an armed standoff with Massachusetts police, saying that their $70 million complaint was incomplete and interfered with their ongoing state court cases.
Rhode Island U.S. District Chief Judge John J. McConnell Jr. dismissed the lawsuit brought by the Rise of the Moors group on Tuesday.
The group, which included a 17-year-old, was arrested on July 3 after a state trooper stopped them on the side of Interstate-95 between Wakefield and Reading at around 1.30am.
The self-described leader of the group said they were a militia traveling from Rhode Island to Maine for training.
Six of the 11 members of the group attend a court hearing in Medford, Massachusetts on July 9
They were stopped wearing tactical gear and carrying weapons by I-95 on July 3 at 1.30am
When they ran into the woods, Massachusetts police engaged in an hours-long manhunt that ended peacefully at 10.30am with all members, including one 17-year-old, captured
'You don't need a license in Rhode Island to own a rifle,' Latimer told officers.
They were dressed in tactical-style gear and armed with pistols and rifles when they refused to comply with orders to drop their weapons and ran into woods by the side of the road.
State police had to close the highway down and issue a shelter-in-place warning to nearby residents. By 10.30am, all 11 had been captured and arrested.
Their 65-page lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Rhode Island, alleged defamation and discrimination.
One of the members, John Doe 1, told the court that he does not want to be represented by someone who is not part of his 'nation. I am free Moor. I am a national,' he said
'If the state courts continue their unlawful prosecution and or conviction, they will be violating the claimants civil, national and human rights,' the suit says.
It named the Massachusetts State Police and several individual troopers, the judge who presided over their state court arraignments, the state as a whole, and several media organizations, including CNN's parent company AT&T New Media, Comcast NBC Universal News Media, Viacom News Media, News Corporation News Media and CBS News Media, as defendants.
Judge McConnell said, 'this court must abstain from hearing such challenges' based on a precedent 'which reflects a longstanding policy against federal court interference with state court proceedings.'
He noted that the lawsuit was not signed by an attorney or by any of the plaintiffs as required by law, and that it did not include any 'clear defamation allegations' or any specific claims 'on which relief may be granted.'
The plaintiffs represented themselves and no defense attorney was listed in court documents.
They hail from Rhode Island, New York and Michigan, according to Boston.com
The Rise of the Moors has more than 16K subscribers on Youtube, where leader Jahmal Latimer posts videos showing off firearms and discussing 'the constitution'
A photo from his Facebook account shows Latimer in tactical gear holding a rifle
Rise of the Moors is just one offshoot of many different types of 'Moorish Sovereign Citizen' groups. Most groups tend to be small, with only a couple dozen followers.
JJ MacNab, a fellow at George Washington University's Program on Extremism, described Moorish sovereign citizens on Twitter as 'a salad bar' group made up of different factions that have cobbled together their own ideology from a variety of sources.
'They rely on an alternative history that borrows from Moorish Science Temple, Black Hebrew Israelism, Nation of Islam, UFO theories, phony Native American tribes, and the pseudo-legal arguments crafted by white supremacist 'patriot' groups in the 1970s,' she says.
One member said the group was a militia traveling from Rhode Island to Maine for training
The Southern Poverty Law Center describes the Moorish sovereign citizen movement as a collection of independent organizations and lone individuals that emerged in the early 1990s as an offshoot of the anti-government sovereign citizens movement, which believes that individual citizens hold sovereignty over, and are independent of, the authority of federal and state governments.
Officials say the 11 men are being held without bail after a series of contentious arraignments and dangerousness hearings at which members of the group said they are sovereign citizens of Moroccan descent and not subject to federal or state laws.
During state court proceedings, one of the men complained that he was not being represented by someone who is part of his 'nation.'
'I am a free Moor. I am a national. I am a living, breathing man.'