Surrender Expected Freemen Set To Give Themselves Up To Fbi Today; Teen Girl Leaves Compound
With the blessing of a jailed freemen leader, FBI agents and members of the extremist group positioned themselves Wednesday for a dramatic surrender ending the 80-day standoff.
A flurry of meetings took place within the compound, and a 16-year-old girl was brought to the gate and picked up by FBI agents. She was the last child to leave, and a prosecutor said she would be taken into state custody.
Karl Ohs, a Montana legislator who has been acting as a mediator, was flying into Jordan on Wednesday for what he hoped would be the final negotiations this morning.
As freemen gathered Wednesday night in the main building at their compound, FBI agents in flak jackets took down the tentlike shelter at the compound’s entrance where weeks of open-air negotiations have taken place.
And a few miles away, agents drove three passenger vans to a small church within the FBI perimeter, apparently in preparation for the freemen’s departure today.
At a jailhouse meeting in Billings on Tuesday, freeman Edwin Clark won approval for the surrender plans from LeRoy Schweitzer, a freemen leader whose arrest March 25 started the standoff.
“The agreement is moving forward,” and the surrender could begin as early as mid-day Thursday, a source familiar with the planning told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.
However, a senior federal official in Washington said the agreement remained fragile.
“The standoff could end tomorrow, but that’s not certain. We take this one day at a time,” that official said.
The surrender plan worked out with the FBI was almost derailed on Wednesday when a farmer tried to begin planting on 2,300 acres of land, adjacent to the freemen ranch, which he had bought at a foreclosure sale.
“It almost blew the whole thing up,” the source familiar with the planning told The Associated Press.
As for the girl, U.S. Attorney Sherry Scheel Matteucci said she would be put in state custody for now. She was identified as Amanda Michele Kendricks, although she’s also known as Ashley Landers and Ashley Taylor.
The freemen compound, 30 miles northwest of Jordan, has been a sanctuary for her mother, Dana Dudley, and stepfather, Russell Landers, of Four Oaks, N.C., who are facing conspiracy charges in Colorado.
On Tuesday, Edwin Clark was flown to Billings by the FBI to meet with Schweitzer, and later was flown back to the ranch on the Montana plains. Shortly thereafter, most of the freemen met in a barn to discuss the developments.
At mid-morning Wednesday, a car drove onto the compound, picked up two freemen at the gate and drove them to the freemen sentry post on a hill overlooking the compound. Four or five other freemen already were at the sentry post.
The car later returned to the negotiating table at the compound entrance, where it was met by a vehicle used earlier by the FBI to shuttle negotiators to and from the compound. People got out of the shuttle vehicle, and a 20-minute meeting followed, but reporters watching from a distance of more than two miles couldn’t tell who they were.
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