OREGON: Federal Grand Jury Indicts Militants

NBC News reports:

A federal grand jury has indicted several people involved in the anti-government protest at an Oregon wildlife sanctuary, where a handful of holdouts continued to occupy the site overnight Wednesday.

Federal prosecutor Geoff Barrow told the AP on Wednesday that the indictment involves the people arrested so far “and others,” perhaps a reference to the four people who have stayed put at the federal refuge — despite Ammon Bundy’s calls for them to leave.

The indictment, which was unsealed Thursday and obtained by NBC News, alleges that the defendants conspired together since last October to prevent refuge employees from doing their work at the wildlife sanctuary “by force, intimidation, and threats.”

The maximum penalty is six years in prison. The Bundy brothers — sons of infamous Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy — remain jailed. The occupiers took over the refuge as part of a larger demand that the federal government turn public lands over to local control.