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Andrew Boryga – Yahoo News July 3, 2021

A cadre of armed men from a militia group called the Rise of the Moors shut down a highway outside of Boston for more than nine hours on Saturday morning after allegedly refusing to comply with police orders and taking off into the woods with guns.

The group says on their website that they’re “Moorish Americans dedicated to educating new Moors and influencing our Elders.” In YouTube videos of the incident, they claimed they were only trying to travel peacefully to their “private land” to camp and “train” on Saturday. CBS Boston reported that they were headed from Rhode Island to Maine.

According to Massachusetts State Police, a trooper saw two cars on the side of the I-95 at about 1:30 a.m. with hazard lights on, attempting to add gas to their tanks.

When the officer stopped to assist, they noticed the men were wearing military gear and had a lot of guns. The trooper asked for driver’s licenses and gun licenses but the men allegedly refused to provide any, and refused to put down their weapons. The trooper called for backup but some of the men fled, police said.

In a livestream video on the group’s YouTube page, a member of the group, dressed in camo gear, said they were traveling with gas tanks to refuel their cars so they could avoid “making any unnecessary stops” that might “alert or alarm the public.”

He claimed they had not violated any laws because they were legally allowed to own guns in the state from which they travelled.

He claimed that they had asked officers to explain what their probable cause was, and a sergeant allegedly said he did not know.

“We do not intend to be hostile, we do not intend to be aggressive,” he said, adding that they are not “anti-police” or “Black-identity extremists.”

“Our nation has a treaty with your government,” the man said, gesturing to another man standing on the highway, holding what looked to be a Moroccan flag. He said they were immune to state laws.

“We’re not anti-government, we’re not anti-police and we’re willing to give them any information they need so that way we can continue with our peaceful journey,” he continued.

The Southern Poverty Law Center says that several organizations and individuals have identified with the Moorish sovereign citizen movement in the U.S. since the 1990s. The movement is associated with the anti-government sovereign citizens movement, and some Moorish sovereigns have come into conflict with government agencies over their refusal to obey laws. They believe that African Americans “constitute an elite class within American society with special rights,” SPLC writes.

“Their self-professed leader wanted very much known their ideology is not anti-government,” State Police Col. Christopher Mason said in a Saturday morning briefing.

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