A man involved in an armed standoff with police on an interstate highway in Massachusetts last week refused a defense attorney and told a court he can't be charged because he's a "foreign national," the Associated Press reported.
Quinn Cumberlander, a 40-year old from Pawtucket, Rhode Island, is one of 11 people facing charges in connection with the standoff that lasted multiple hours on Interstate 95 in Wakefield, the Associated Press reported.
A state trooper found the suspects—wearing body armor and armed with firearms that they weren't licensed to carry in the state—refueling on the side of the highway Saturday morning. The standoff began when some of the men fled into nearby woods.
The men are facing charges that include unlawful possession of a firearm and ammunition and the use of body armor in commission of a crime. A judge in Malden District Court in Medford, Massachusetts, ruled that Cumberlander be held without bail in anticipation of a Friday hearing in which the court will rule whether or not he is dangerous.
"We didn't want to cause fear. I object to being held without bail. I am not a threat to society or anybody," Cumberlander said in court.
For more reporting from the Associated Press, see below.
Another defendant, Robert Rodriguez, 21, of the Bronx, New York, asked that a fellow defendant serve as his attorney, but the judge noted that the man is not a licensed lawyer.
He also refused to be interviewed by Probation.
"I was seen by a probation officer," Rodriguez said. "But I did not commit a crime."
A third defendant, who has refused to identify himself to authorities, told the judge he was a "free Moor."
The judge ruled he had waived right to counsel, then ordered him out of the courtroom to watch proceedings on Zoom because he kept interrupting her.
The defendants—10 men and a 17-year-old—say they are members of a group called Rise of the Moors. Several of their supporters were also in court, while others watched remotely, sometimes interrupting.
The Southern Poverty Law Center says the Moorish sovereign citizen movement is a collection of independent organizations and individuals that emerged in the 1990s as an offshoot of the antigovernment sovereign citizens' movement. People in the movement believe individual citizens hold sovereignty over, and are independent of, the authority of federal and state governments.
The vast majority of Moorish sovereign citizens are African American, according to the SPLC.
On the Rise of the Moors website, however, they say they are not sovereign citizens, but the original sovereigns of the U.S. based on a 1789 letter from George Washington to the sultan of Morocco.
Those arrested Saturday were identified as Jamhal Latimer, also known as Jamhal Talib Abdullah Bey; Cumberlander; Rodriguez; Wilfredo Hernandez, also known as Will Musa; Alban El Curraugh; Aaron Lamont Johnson, also known as Tarrif Sharif Bey; Lamar Dow; Conrad Pierre; a 17-year-old; and two who have refused to identify themselves, state police said. They are from Rhode Island, New York and Michigan.
