A raid on a New Mexico desert compound housing ‘Muslim extremists’ turned up 11 children wearing rags and living in filth, and also broke open a bizarre tale of guns, exorcism, and a search for a missing young boy who suffers from seizures and is nowhere to be found.
The boy’s father was among five people arrested after the raid near the border with Colorado.
Documents made public in a court filing Monday said the father told the boy’s mother before fleeing Georgia that he wanted to perform an exorcism on the child because he believed he was possessed by the devil.

Sisters Subhanah Wahhaj, 35, (left) and Hujrah Wahhaj, 38, (right) were arrested on Sunday

Jany Leveille, who also goes by the name Maryam, was also arrested for child abuse on Sunday


Siraj Ibn Wahhaj, 39, had an AR-15 rifle, 150 rounds of ammunition and four loaded pistols at the site. He has been on the run since December when he vanished with his three-year-old disabled son from Georgia. The toddler was not found. His brother-in-law Lucas Morton (right) was also charged with harboring a fugitive. He is married to Siraj’s sister Subhanah
Taos County Sheriff Jerry Hogrefe said deputies arrested the father, Siraj Ibn Wahhaj, and four other adults on child abuse charges after finding the 11 children Friday inside a makeshift compound in the tiny community of Amalia.
It was littered with ‘odorous trash’ and lacking clean water, authorities said.
Inside, Wahhaj, 39, was found heavily armed with multiple firearms, including a loaded AR-15, before he was taken into custody, the sheriff said.
His son, Abdul-ghani (AG), who was 3 when he disappeared last December, was not among the children found.
But Hogrefe said authorities have reason to believe the boy was at the compound several weeks ago.

This is the New Mexico compound where 11 children were found on Friday being held by their Muslim extremist father and uncle, Siraj Ibn Wahhaj, along with their parents
Hogrefe’s deputies are searching for the child, along with the FBI and Georgia authorities in Clayton County, where officials say the boy was living before his father took him around Dec. 1, 2017.
The boy’s mother told authorities the boy suffers from seizures, cannot walk because of severe medical issues, and requires constant attention.
She told police in December that Wahhaj had taken the boy for a trip to a park and never returned.

Siraj’s three-year-old son AG, who has hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy and requires daily medication, has been missing since December and was not at the compound
Clayton County police said in a missing persons bulletin that Wahhaj and his son were last seen Dec. 13 in Alabama, traveling with five other children and two adults.
Georgia authorities said Wahhaj was traveling through Chilton County on Dec. 13 with seven children and another adult when their car overturned.
Wahhaj told police the group was traveling from Georgia to New Mexico to go camping.
The trooper who wrote the report said he found no camping equipment in or near the vehicle but that Wahhaj was in possession of three handguns, two rifles, a bag of ammunition, and a bulletproof vest.
Wahhaj told the trooper that he owned the guns legally and had a Georgia permit to carry concealed weapons.
‘Mr. Wahhaj seemed to be very concerned about his weapons and stated several times that they were his property and that he owned them legally,’ the report said.

The conditions inside the compound were described by police as the worst they had seen in 30 years

There was no food at the compound and the children had terrible personal hygiene, police said

Amalia is 145 miles northeast of Albuquerque and in an isolated high-desert area near the New Mexico-Colorado border
It was not immediately known Monday whether Wahhaj and the others charged in the child abuse case in New Mexico -another man and three women believed to be the mother of the 11 children – had retained attorneys.
The public defender’s office in Taos County did not immediately return telephone message from The Associated Press seeking comment.
The Taos County sheriff identified the women facing charges as 35-year-old Jany Leveille, 38-year-old Hujrah Wahhaj, and 35-year-old Subhannah Wahhaj.
They were arrested in the town of Taos and booked into jail.
Sunbhanah and Hujrah are Siraj’s sisters and Jany is his wife. She worked for his father, Imam Siraj Wahhaj, at the Masjid At-Taqwa mosque in Brooklyn before relocating with her husband to Georgia in 2014. She is not AG’s mother.

The family has been missing since January when their father, Imam Siraj Wahhaj, appealed for information about them on Facebook

The children’s grandfather is Imam Siraj Wahhaj, the leader of the Muslim Alliance of North America and the leader of a mosque in Brooklyn, New York City
The search at the compound came amid a two-month investigation in collaboration with Clayton County authorities and the FBI, according to Hogrefe.
He said FBI agents surveilled the area a few weeks ago but did not find probable cause to search the property.
That changed when Georgia detectives forwarded a message to Hogrefe’s office that initially had been sent to a third party, saying: ‘We are starving and need food and water.’
Authorities will not say how the message was delivered or who gave it to them but Sheriff Hogrefe said it meant he could not wait any longer for federal authorities to move in on the site.
He enlisted a special forces team to lead the raid because he knew the men inside were heavily armed, he added.
What authorities found was what Hogrefe called ‘the saddest living conditions and poverty’ he has seen in 30 years on the job.
Other than a few potatoes and a box of rice, there was little food in the compound, which Hogrefe said consisted of a small travel trailer buried in the ground and covered by plastic with no water, plumbing and electricity.

AG’s mother Hakima Ramzi was married to his father without incident for 15 years, she said. She has been pleading for AG’s return since December and is seen above in a Facebook video appealing for help to find them
Hogrefe said the adults and children – ages 1 to 15 – had no shoes, wore dirty rags for clothing and ‘looked like Third World country refugees.’
The grandfather of the missing boy, Imam Siraj Wahhaj of Brooklyn, New York, issued a plea on Facebook for helping finding his grandson.
In a federal court filing in 2006, Siraj Ibn Wahhaj claimed he was harassed on his way to and from Morocco by customs agents at JFK Airport in New York because he is ‘the son of the famous Muslim Imam Siraj Wahhaj.’
The earliest record of Siraj Ibn Wahhaj in the United States dates back to 1983.
It is not clear where he lived beforehand or if he was born in the US.
In January, his father pleaded for information about their whereabouts.
‘Dear Brothers and Sisters, please make duas for the safe return of our children and grandchildren: Siraj, Hujrah, Subhanah Wahhaj, son in law Luqman (Lucas) Morton, and daughter in law Maryam (Jany) Leveille and their children (our 12 grandchildren).
‘We believe they may be traveling together,’ he said in a Facebook post.
He has not commented on his children’s arrest. Imam Wahhaj is the leader of The Muslim Alliance in North America.
Police are still looking for three-year-old AG.
AG’s mother Hakima Ramzi has made desperate social media appeals to find her son again.
Her friends have also set up a GoFundMe page to help pay for the search.