Email alerted law enforcement to "starving" children at the Taos compound

Oct. 2—The first bulletin went out in December 2017 announcing the disappearance of a child in Georgia, but nearly eight months passed before law enforcement raided a remote Taos County compound where they found the boy's remains, witnesses said Monday in the federal terrorism and kidnapping trial of four people.

Law enforcement officials said months passed after the boy's mother first reported on Dec. 14, 2017, that her then-husband, Siraj Ibn Wahhaj, had snatched the severely ill 3-year-old child from her motel room in Atlanta, explaining he was taking the boy to a park.

Prosecutors allege that the boy, Abdul Ghani Wahhaj, died sometime around Christmas 2017 in New Mexico while Wahhaj, the boy's father, was performing an hours-long exorcism ritual that included putting his hand on the boy's throat.

On Aug. 2, 2018, Taos County Sheriff's Office deputies received information from "a credible source" that children were "starving" and "malnourished" at the ramshackle compound near the Colorado border, Taos County Undersheriff Jerry Hogrefe told jurors on Monday.

The information, contained in an email sent by someone living in the compound, gave law enforcement officers the probable cause they needed to obtain a search warrant and enter the compound, said Hogrefe, who at the time was the elected sheriff of Taos County.

"Now I have a welfare account for 11 hungry, malnourished children," said Hogrefe, who entered the compound with a dozen heavily armed officers on Aug. 3, 2018.

Siraj Ibn Wahhaj, 45, his sisters Hujrah Wahhaj and Subhanah Wahhaj, both 40, and Subhanah's husband, Lucas Morton, 45, all were indicted by a federal grand jury in March 2019 on charges including providing material support to terrorists, conspiracy to murder an officer or employee of the United States, and other charges.

Siraj Ibn Wahhaj was not charged with kidnapping because federal law prohibits a parent from being so charged. His sisters and brother-in-law are charged with kidnapping and conspiracy to commit kidnapping.

Attorneys for Subhanah and Hujrah Wahhaj said in opening statements last week the government's allegations of terrorism are "speculative" and based on events that never occurred.

A fifth person, Jany Lavielle, 40, pleaded guilty in February to a federal firearms charge and one conspiracy charge and faces 15 years in prison.

Lavielle's son, Jamil Louis-Jacques, now 18, testified last week that her mother had convinced other co-defendants that Abdul Ghani would be resurrected as a messiah after his death and lead believers on a mission to rid the world of evil.

By the time of the raid, the compound had been under observation for months, including by aerial surveillance, Hogrefe testified. However, the boy's mother was not able to identify her son from surveillance photographs, which left law enforcement without probable cause to raid the compound, he said.

Information had dribbled into various law enforcement agencies about a possible abduction involving people at the compound.

The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children published a bulletin on Dec. 22, 2017, that included photos of Wahhaj, 45, and his son, Abdul Ghani, a Georgia police officer testified Monday.

A Georgia judge issued a warrant for Wahhaj's arrest and a pick-up order for the child on Jan. 9, 2018, Clayton County, Georgia, police Capt. Scott Stubbs testified. Georgia officials also provided information that Morton owned property in Taos County in an area called Castillo Meadows, Stubbs said.

Jurors also heard testimony Monday from a brother of three of the defendants who said his siblings had tried to recruit him to join their movement.

Muhammed Wahhaj testified that Morton hand-delivered a letter to him at his Atlanta-area home in late December 2017 urging him to "bring my guns and join whatever it was they were doing." The letter, written by Lavielle, predicted that the boy would return as the messiah in about April, he said.

"Jany (Lavielle) told me that if I didn't come, I was going to die the next day," Muhammed Wahhaj told jurors. Lavielle's intent "was to make me scared," he said.

Muhammed Wahhaj said he rejected Lavielle's letter and tried unsuccessfully to learn from Morton the whereabouts of his three siblings and the missing child.