Group convicted in northern New Mexico terror plot receive sentences
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (KRQE) – Six years after the FBI uncovered a terrorist plot at a compound in northern New Mexico, the five people responsible now know their fate.
“Finally, to be able to put this to bed, to give some finality in sentence and some justice, it feels great.” That’s New Mexico’s U.S. Attorney Alexander Uballez satisfied with Wednesday’s sentencing of five people connected to a terrorist plot in northern New Mexico.
“The horrifying events that played out in graphic detail during this three-week trial, radical ideologies to violent extremist beliefs, the banality of everyday life centered around the corpse of a dead child in a fortified compound in rural New Mexico,” Uballez said.
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Siraj Wahhaj, his sisters Hujrah and Subhanah, and Subhanah’s husband Lucas Morton were sentenced to life in prison.
The ring leader of the group, Jany Leveille, took a plea deal. She was sentenced to 15 years in prison. “She took responsibility, she took it early and she took it fully, and here in the United States Justice System we value folks who redeem themselves by taking responsibility for the terrible things that they did,” Uballez said.
It all started after a federal raid uncovered a terrorist training ground in Taos County back in 2018. Documents state the group was plotting and training children to carry out attacks on FBI agents and government institutions. The feds found the five adults and 11 malnourished children on the property. A property that authorities say was heavily militarized. “The sentencing imposed today sent a clear message, the FBI takes its mission of protecting the American public seriously,” Ruben Morales with the FBI said.
The feds claimed the group kidnapped Siraj Wahhaj’s three-year-old son from his mother in Georgia and took him to the property where he was subjected to exorcism rituals. Authorities believe they were planning to use the child as a prop in their plot to kill those who did not convert and follow Leveille. That child later died in 2017. “The heart of this case is a senseless death of three-year-old Abdul Ghani, as a father myself, I offer my deepest condolences,” Uballez said.
Documents state Leveille covered up the death and convinced the group the boy would be resurrected. She was found to have acute schizophrenia that led to hallucinations and says she heard voices that made her believe she was a prophet. Leveille spoke Wednesday in court apologizing for her part and to her co-defendants saying ‘this wouldn’t have happened if I wasn’t sick.’
“While today’s sentencing can not take away the pain or fill the void of the innocent child who was kidnapped and subsequently lost his life, I sincerely hope there’s some comfort in knowing those who committed these terrible crimes have been brought to justice,” Morales said.
A federal jury convicted Wahhaj and Morton on terrorism charges. The two sisters, Hujrah and Subhanah, are also facing kidnapping charges, including kidnapping resulting in death. Leveille pled guilty to conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists and being in possession of a firearm while unlawfully in the United States. Once her sentence is complete, she will be deported back to Haiti because she was in the country illegally.
