11 men arrested after armed standoff on I-95
Claimed to be part of a group called Rise of the Moors
Eleven men were taken into custody Saturday after a lengthy roadside standoff between police officers in Massachusetts and a group of heavily armed men in tactical gear who claimed to be part of a group called Rise of the Moors.
Dozens of police officers from Massachusetts and New Hampshire responded to the standoff, which shut down part of a highway for several hours and prompted authorities to order people in surrounding communities to shelter in place.
The men, who appeared to be livestreaming the standoff on Youtube, eventually surrendered to police without any shots being fired, authorities said. There were no injuries.
“I attribute the successful resolution of this to both patience, professionalism and partnership,” Col. Christopher Mason of the Massachusetts State Police said.
The standoff, according to the State Police, began at about 1:30 a.m. Saturday when a state trooper stopped to check on two vehicles that had pulled over in the emergency breakdown lane of Interstate 95 in Wakefield, about 15 miles north of Boston. The men were refilling their gas tanks with their own fuel, and they appeared to be wearing military tactical gear and carrying rifles and other guns. Mason said the men had said they were making their way from Rhode Island to Maine for “training.”
When the men failed to provide identification and firearm licenses as requested, the trooper asked for backup, Mason said.
First, two armed men were taken into custody, Mason said, and negotiators spent hours talking to other members of the group, some of whom were in the woods by the highway and some who were in their vehicles.
A shelter-in-place order was set for residents of Wakefield and Reading, and part of I-95 was closed to traffic.
By 10:15 a.m., the police had arrested the nine remaining group members. All of them surrendered without incident, Mason said, and “a number” of firearms were seized.
The police lifted the shelter-in-place orders, and the highway was reopened.
Marian Ryan, the Middlesex County district attorney, said she expected the men would be charged Tuesday with “firearms and other charges.” The State Police said that several of the men were refusing to provide identifying information, delaying the booking process.
Mason said the men involved in the standoff had said they were part of a group called Rise of the Moors. On the group’s website, Rise of the Moors says it seeks “equal justice under our own law, and not under the United States government, as we are not citizens of the United States.”
“Since we are not citizens of the United States, we owe no tax obligations to the government of the United States,” the website states.
Mason said the group’s “self-professed leader wanted very much known their ideology is not antigovernment.”
“Our investigation will provide us more insight into what their motivation, what their ideology is,” he said.