The leader of a month-long armed occupation of a federal wildlife refuge in Oregon on Wednesday urged remaining protesters to leave the site and go home, a day after his arrest and the death of a supporter.
Ammon Bundy, who was taken into custody with several members of his group at a traffic stop along Highway 395, north of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in southeast Oregon, urged federal authorities to let his comrades leave the compound without being prosecuted.
“To those remaining at the refuge, I love you. Let us take this fight from here. Please stand down... Please go home,” Bundy said in a statement read by his attorney, Michael Arnold, following a court hearing.
A total of eight occupiers had left the compound by late on Wednesday and three were arrested, including Jason Patrick, who had been with Bundy’s group in Oregon since the beginning and was acting as a spokesman for the holdouts, the FBI said in a statement.
It was unclear how many people remained inside the refuge.
Brandon Curtiss, a member of the Pacific Patriots Network, which has been acting as an intermediary between law enforcement and Bundy’s supporters, said the FBI informed him of Patrick’s arrest.
The three taken into custody face a federal charge of felony conspiracy to impede federal officers.
Patrick on Wednesday told reporters by telephone that some protesters were leaving, but rejected the word “surrender.”
“I don’t know what surrendering looks like,” he said. “They’re walking through the checkpoint and going home. That’s what I’ve heard unless I’m being lied to.”
Citing the investigation, authorities declined to say what led to the fatal shooting of a member of Bundy’s group, identified by activists as Robert LaVoy Finicum, a rancher who acted as a spokesman for the occupiers. Bundy’s brother, Ryan, was wounded during the traffic stop.
The protesters were each charged in US District Court in Portland with conspiracy to use force, intimidation or threats to impede federal officers from discharging their duties.
The defendants were ordered held without bail until a detention hearing set for today.
The Malheur takeover, which started on Jan. 2 with at least a dozen armed men, was a flare-up in the so-called Sagebrush Rebellion, a decades-old conflict over federal control of millions of hectares in the West.
At a news conference earlier in the day, state and federal authorities pleaded with the remaining occupiers to quit their protest, saying they were free to leave.
“Let me be clear: It is the actions and choices of the armed occupiers of the refuge that have led us to where we are today,” said Greg Bretzing, special agent in charge of the FBI’s office in Portland.
“They had ample opportunity to leave the refuge peacefully and as the FBI and our partners have clearly demonstrated, actions are not without consequences,” he said.
Federal officials say they had probable cause to arrest Finicum, who told NBC News earlier this month that he would rather die than be detained.
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