'Moorish American' group: Providence police tried to raid our temple

PROVIDENCE — Members of an organization whose followers believe they are of Moroccan descent and immune from state laws are suing the Providence Police Department this week, accusing officers of violating their rights by interrupting a lecture on Acorn Street this month.

Four people who identify as Moorish American Indigenous people filed separate law suits the department, Lt. Richard Esposito, and various officers, alleging they violated their right to bear arms; their right to peacefully assemble and tried to search their 23 Acorn Street temple on Oct. 5 without a warrant. They are seeking $1 million each and a public apology from Mayor Jorge Elorza and the police department, according to filings in U.S. District Court.

Providence police Col. Hugh T. Clements Jr. said Saturday that neither he nor the city solicitor had seen the law suits complaints. "We not aware of them," he said.

According to the suits, Grand Sheik Jamhal Talib Abdullah Bey was lecturing to a collection of men, woman and children on Moorish science, history, law, religion and nationality Oct. 5 at 23 Acorn St., third floor, when he received a call from his cousin. He learned that officers were trying to enter the building in response to a complaint that someone watching a live feed of his talk had seen Bey teaching the class with a semi-automatic weapon strapped around his neck and a Glock 22 on his waist. He did so "to relay a message to Moorish nationals that we can be intelligent, peaceful and still practice our religious right to bare [sic] arms," Bey wrote in his suit.

Bey said he informed the class what was happening and secured his arms, knowing children were inside, while others from the group went out to "ensure that they were safe from police terrorism, as our nation is often slandered in the media by police ... who lack jurisdiction over our nation."

Julisa Amurra Adonay El said she saw 15 to 20 "militarized" police "stacked" against the wall preparing to raid. The officers told them that they wanted to enter to investigate if everyone was safe; she denied them entry, El said. She reported fearing for her life and that of her unborn child due to the imminent danger being posed by the police to her and her classmates.

"I felt afraid for my safety and for the safety of my classmates because they had weapons and [we] were unarrmed," Elle Sanon Auguste El wrote in her law suit.

Bey then read to the officers about the group's rights under the state and federal constitutions, he said. After about an hour, the police told them they had no standing and left, he said.

A YouTube video shows Bey addressing about a dozen men, women and children with a semi-automatic gun strapped to him. He reads from the Koran and speaks about the right to bear arms and their community existing in servitude to the imperial "Europeans." He tells of Moors being a separate sovereign nation of aboriginal indigenous people and his plans to be recognized as such by the city and the state.

"We're teaching our people not to be criminals," Bey says.

The class is interrupted after about an hour and a half as viewers of the live feed watched. Bey and others exit through a door before the video loses its volume and stops.

No police officers are seen or heard in the video.

A call to Bey was not immediately returned Saturday.

The Southern Poverty Law Center describes the Moorish sovereign citizen movement as "a collection of independent organizations and lone individuals that emerged in the early 1990s as an offshoot of the anti-government sovereign citizens movement, which believes that individual citizens hold sovereignty over, and are independent of, the authority of federal and state governments."  Its roots are based in the Moorish Science Temple of America founded in 1913 by Noble Drew Ali.

Many of the groups hold the belief that there is a 1787 treaty between the United States and Morocco that grants them immunity from U.S. law, the center said. They frequently use the surnames Bey and El.

Moorish groups have received national attention. In Baltimore, a man accused of murder and arson argued he was exempt from state law. In Bethesda, Maryland, Moorish Nationals claimed a $6-million mansion awaiting sale as their own. Then Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel in 2011 issued a proclamation declaring a week in January as Moorish American Week. In 2017, a federal judge sentenced the "Grand Sheik” of a Moorish Temple in Chicago to 68 months in prison for scheming to defraud the Internal Revenue Service out of $3.2 million.

kmulvane@providencejournal.com

@kmulvane

(401)277-7417