New Mexico children being ‘trained for gun massacres’

CHILDREN held at a remote compound in New Mexico were being taught how to carry out mass school shootings, prosecutors have claimed.

Siraj Wahhaj, 39, last night appeared before a magistrate in Taos, New Mexico, after being arrested on child abuse and abduction charges following a police raid last week.

Tim Hasson, a prosecutor with the district court in Taos, claimed that Mr Wahhaj, the son of a prominent Brooklyn imam, had taught one of the children how to use an assault rifle.

Mr Hasson appealed for Mr Wahhaj to remain in custody, and asked that his case be moved to the district court. His office has also filed motions to hold the other four defendants arrested with Mr Wahhaj.

Last night, it emerged that one of the 11 children taken into care had, according to prosecutors, told their foster parents that Mr Wahhaj trained them to carry out school shootings.

Mr Wahhaj was arrested after police, searching for Abdul-ghani, his missing four-year-old son, raided the compound and found 11 starving, filthy children with five adults.

Mr Wahhaj and four others – Jany Leveille, 38, his wife, Subhannah, 35, and Hujrah, 38, his sisters, and Lucas Morten, Subhannah’s husband – were charged with 11 counts of child abuse.

Sheriff Jerry Hogrefe, who arrested Mr Wahhaj and his associates after a day-long armed standoff, said the remains of a young boy, believed to be Mr Wahhaj’s missing son, was found buried on the property.

He said his men found Mr Wahhaj in a “partly buried camper trailer” with two women and several children and that he “was armed with a loaded revolver in his pocket” and was “wearing a belt with five loaded 30-round AR15 magazines in pouches on the belt”.

Next to him was a loaded AR15, he claimed, adding that Mr Wahhaj refused to give his name or identify anyone with him and would not discuss his son Abdul’s whereabouts.