FBI Moving In On Last 4 Occupiers At Oregon Wildlife Refuge

[news]

Federal agents on Wednesday moved in on the last four anti-government militants still holed up at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon, the FBI said in a statement.

The four protesters were indicted last week along with 12 others previously arrested on charges of conspiring to impede federal officers during the monthlong armed standoff at the compound.

The takeover at Malheur, which began on Jan. 2, was sparked by the return to prison of two Oregon ranchers convicted of setting fires that spread to federal property in the vicinity of the refuge.


The occupation, led by Ammon Bundy, also was directed as a protest against federal control over millions of acres public land in the West.

Bundy and 10 others were arrested in January in Oregon, most of them during a confrontation with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and state police on a snow-covered roadside where a spokesman for the group, Robert "LaVoy" Finicum, was shot dead. A 12th member of the group turned himself in to police in Arizona.

The FBI said its agents moved to contain the remaining four holdouts Wednesday evening after one of the occupiers drove an all-terrain vehicle outside the barricades previously set up by the self-styled militia members at the refuge.

FBI agents attempted to approach the driver, and he sped away back to the compound, after which federal agents "moved to contain the remaining occupiers by placing agents at barricades both immediately ahead of and behind" their encampment, the FBI said.

A number of the occupiers were broadcasting their account of events as they were unfolding via an independent Internet program, "Revolution Radio," that is known to be sympathetic to the occupation.

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