A man arrested after 11 malnourished children were found in a remote desert compound was training them to commit school shootings, US media report.
According to prosecutors’ documents, Siraj Ibn Wahhaj was teaching some of the children, who are aged one to 15, how to use weapons.
Mr Wahhaj was one of two armed men arrested at the scene on Friday in New Mexico. Three women were also arrested.
Police say the remains of a boy were also discovered at the compound. Found on Monday, the remains are those of Mr Wahhaj’s missing three-year-old son, Abdula-Ghani Wahhaj, the Taos News reports.
Mr Wahhaj is suspected of abducting the boy from his Georgia home in December, and it was the search for him that led to the arrests. The toddler suffered from seizures according to the missing person’s report filed by his mother. But Mr Wahhaj believed the boy needed to be exorcised, say court papers.
Mr Hasson requested that Mr Wahhaj be held without bail.
“He poses a great danger to the children found on the property as well as a threat to the community as a whole due to the presence of firearms and his intent to use these firearms in a violent and illegal manner,” Mr Hasson wrote in court documents.
The complaint cites a foster parent of one of the 11 children as saying Mr Wahhaj “had trained the child in the use of an assault rifle in preparation for future school shootings”, US media say.
Three women, believed to be the children’s mothers, were also “arrested without incident” and booked into the Taos Adult Detention Center, according to the sheriff’s office.
The officers who discovered the children said they looked “like Third World country refugees not only with no food or fresh water, but with no shoes, personal hygiene and basically dirty rags for clothing”.
Police said they had been aware of the compound for some time but had to wait for a search warrant before entering, as the occupants were “most likely heavily armed and considered extremist of the Muslim belief”.
