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National

Attorneys: 5 charged in terror

case because they are Muslims

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — Attorneys for five people facing federal terrorism-related charges following their arrests last summer in a New Mexico compound raid said Thursday their clients are being prosecuted because they are Muslims.

“This case is about freedom of religion, freedom of association and the right to bear arms,” said Billy Blackburn, an attorney for Subhanah Wahhaj, one of those charged. He and other defense attorneys said their clients are innocent of the charges.

The five pleaded not guilty in federal court Thursday to new charges that include conspiring to support planned attacks on U.S. law enforcement officers, military members and government employees.

They have been in federal custody since August on firearms charges, which accuse them of conspiring to provide weapons and ammunition to Jany Leveille, one of the five and a leader of the group who is from Haiti and had been living in the country illegally.

The group travelled in late 2017 from Georgia to New Mexico, where they built their compound in Amalia, which is just south of the Colorado border. The area is dotted with some of the region’s signature “earthship” self-built homes.

35 years in prison: Man exonerated

in rape case and freed

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Criminal justice advocates say a man convicted of a 1982 rape in Louisiana’s capital city has been exonerated and freed after 35 years in prison.

The Innocence Project, which works to free wrongly convicted defendants, said in a news release that 58-year-old Archie Williams was released Thursday based on a check of an updated FBI fingerprint database. It says fingerprints found at the scene of the rape and stabbing in Baton Rouge were matched last week to another man — a confessed serial rapist who died in prison in 1996.

The Advocate reports that Williams walked out of the state courthouse in Baton Rouge along with relatives and attorneys, including Innocence Project co-founder Barry Scheck.

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