The father of a missing three-year-old boy in Georgia trained children at a New Mexico compound to carry out school shootings, prosecutors said in court documents filed Wednesday.
Court documents state that Siraj Ibn Wahhaj, 39, held a series of weapons training sessions at a Taos, New Mexico, compound near the Colorado border where authorities found 11 hungry children living in squalor.
Prosecutors requested that Wahhaj be held in jail without bond. Authorities arrested Wahhaj last week along with four adults on charges of child abuse.
Authorities conducted a raid of the compound Friday after investigating the disappearance of three-year-old Abdul-ghani Wahhaj, who went missing in Jonesboro, Georgia, in December.
Investigators say the remains of a boy had also been discovered on the compound Monday, but a medical examiner has not yet been able to confirm the remains were of the missing boy.
Taos County Sheriff Jerry Hogrefe said that authorities found Wahhaj “heavily armed with an AR15 rifle, five loaded 30 round magazines, and four loaded pistols, including one in his pocket when he was taken down.”
Hogrefe added that the children on the compound, ranging in age from one to 15 years old, “looked like third world country refugees with not only with no food or fresh water, but with no shoes, personal hygiene and basically dirty rags for clothing.”
Siraj Wahhaj’s father, who also goes by the name Siraj Wahhaj, was an “unindicted co-conspirator” of the 1993 World Trade Center bombings and a prominent Imam and leader of the Muslim Alliance in North America, the Washington Times reported. Authorities believed he was connected to the bombings, but prosecutors never filed charges against him.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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