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Border Militia: We'll Shut Down the Border with Machine Guns Casey Nethercott is the leader of a militia group dubbed the Arizona Guard and said during a TV interview broadcast on Friday, "When this Minuteman thing is over, if it doesn't work, we're going to come out here and close the border with machine guns." KVOA TV-4 in Tucson carried a report on Friday by reporter Nancy Perla that toured the group's compound that sits along the Arizona/Mexico border near Douglas, Arizona. The camera showed two older model American made SUV's, both painted black, that Nethercott claims are "armored vehicles"...

A Houstonian armed to the teeth stands atop his pickup truck in the Arizona desert. He wishes to deter illegal immigrants from Mexico, but he and his confederates will fail. Border Patrol officials said some civilian observers set off motion detectors, complicating rather than aiding the agency's mission.

U.S. News] Washington, Mar 24 : President George W Bush has decried efforts by armed private groups to act as self-appointed policemen to bar illegal Mexican immigrants coming into the United States, and pledged to push for a "reasonable" immigration policy. More than 1,000 people--including 30 pilots with their private planes--have volunteered for what they call their "Minuteman Project", seeking to monitor the movement of illegal aliens during April and report them to the Border patrol. Bush said after yesterday's summit with Mexican President Vicente Fox and Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin at Baylor University that he finds such actions...

HARRISBURG -- Way back in 1872, a deputy sheriff from Philadelphia traveled all the way to the northwest corner of Pennsylvania to bring back a suspect. But instead, the suspect killed the sheriff, and the killer was then captured and hanged by a private group of "volunteers" who called themselves the State Police of Crawford and Erie Counties. The vigilantes then carried the bodies of both dead men back to Philadelphia. "The group was also created to round up horse thieves," apparently a serious problem at the time, Col. Jeffrey Miller, commander of the Pennsylvania State Police, told a state...

A convicted sex offender broke into a San Francisco home in the Ingleside district and raped a 9-year-old girl in her bedroom in an hourlong attack that ended when the girl's mother walked into the room, San Francisco police said. The man, police say, fled on foot and was chased by the girl's father, who at one point struck him with a 2-by-4. The man continued fleeing through several backyards and was captured by police and identified as Roberto Gamero, 36, of San Francisco, police said. "It's a parent's worst nightmare,'' said San Francisco police Deputy Chief Morris Tabak of...

HERNANDO - Water continues to close in on homes in the Arrowhead neighborhood like a noose. It has already swallowed several. "Dead End" signs take on new meanings on roads where water chokes engines and traps drivers. Alligators and water moccasins have become unwanted neighbors. Dead fish float in a brown soup that overpowers the nostrils with sulfureous and sewage smells. "Everything imaginable is going on," said Mark Haggard, a Citrus County Sheriff's Office Community Affairs volunteer, who guards a neighborhood checkpoint that limits access to residents and emergency workers. Stress builds among the stubborn who refuse to abandon their...

DOUGLAS - Around 1 a.m. Thursday, Bill Dore received a call from a friend asking him to watch over his ranch and his two dogs. When Dore went to the ranch complex of three buildings, he was refused entrance because the compound was under the control of the FBI. Dore received the call from Casey James Nethercott, who at the time of phone talk was in FBI custody at the Cochise County Jail in Bisbee. Nethercott, 37, told him that Kalen Robert Riddle, who is called "Tiny" - though he weighs more than 350 pounds - had been shot. "He...

THREE American vigilantes who ran their own counter-terror campaign in Afghanistan yesterday denied charges of torturing prisoners in a private jail and were given a week to bolster their defence with documents returned by the FBI.The group’s leader, Jonathan Idema, accused the United States authorities of withholding hundreds of documents, photos and videos which he claimed proved his contacts with the CIA, FBI and the US department of defence. Idema, Brett Bennett and Edward Caraballo were arrested when Afghan security forces raided their makeshift prison in a house in Kabul on 5 July. They face charges including hostage-taking and "mental...

KABUL, Afghanistan - The U.S. military said Saturday there could be more vigilantes hunting terror suspects here after a group of Americans were arrested for allegedly abusing Afghans in a private jail. The U.S. government is offering big rewards for the capture of top terrorist suspects, including a US$50 million bounty on al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden. It remains unclear if the three Americans who went on trial in the Afghan capital on Wednesday charged with hostage-taking and torture were hoping to cash in _ or if they were the only such group in the country. "It is entirely possible...

WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO PROPERTY RIGHTS? A monastery official and a human rights advocacy group sued a southern Arizona ranch family Wednesday, accusing them of impersonating federal agents and violating the rights of undocumented immigrants. Border Action Network, a human rights organization, and Donald J. Mackenzie, groundskeeper for and vice president of Summerland Monastery Inc., filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court against Roger Barnett; his wife, Barbara, and his brother, incorrectly identified as Ralph. The lawsuit will be amended to correct the name Ralph to Donald, attorney Jesus Romo said. The civil action accuses the Barnetts of conspiracy to...

June 17, 2003 The National Review Online Koorosh Afshar TEHRAN, IRAN — During the past few nights, we Iranian youth have been agitating — at great risk to our lives — to remove the 24-year-old plague that has stricken our homeland. Our goal is to topple the theocratic regime of the mullahs. Our opponents are barbarian vigilantes — members of Ansaar-e-Hezbollah — who are backed by heavily armed Iranian riot police. Westerners may have difficulty imagining what these people are like. In fact, it's quite easy: Simply remember the Taliban. The only difference is that they don't wear Afghani clothes....

<p>The head of the Cochise County Democratic Party has the support of at least one Arizona congressman in his call for a citizens board to review assaults against immigrants by "vigilantes."</p> <p>Democratic Party Chairman Jim Cooper will discuss his plan at length Saturday in Douglas at a march to honor an illegal immigrant killed earlier this month by a U.S. Border Patrol agent.</p>

A rising death toll prompted a self-appointed border watcher to call Monday for cooperation between his group and those trying to save illegal entrants. Chris Simcox, founder of the Tombstone-based Civil Homeland Defense, says he wants to work with organizations such as Humane Borders, Samaritan Patrol and the Border Action Network, groups typically on the opposite end of the immigration debate. Simcox said his group has seen a dramatic increase in the number of illegal border crossers needing water and medical attention. He said his volunteers are willing to use their knowledge of heavily used trails along the border in...

ReutersTuesday, May 13, 2003; 7:40 PM By Deborah TedfordMONTERREY, Mexico (Reuters) - An Arizona vigilante group is testing homemade "drone" reconnaissance planes on the U.S.-Mexican border to monitor illegal immigrants entering the United States in lonely desert areas.Glenn Spencer, head of the American Border Patrol vigilante group, said on Tuesday the group has been testing two Unmanned Aerial Vehicles for about a month and plans to have a fleet making passes over the border by early July."We want to show how the application of this technology can solve the border problem," Spencer told Reuters.Police and residents say they are aware...

Russian gardeners hunting a scrap metal thief were surprised when their man turned out to be an Osama bin Laden lookalike. The Alekseyevka gardening association in the Kursk region of Russia is considering offering the bin Laden double to the US in exchange for a new electric transformer. Their old one was destroyed by thieves looking for scrap metal. The gardeners staged an ambush to try and catch the culprit. They hid in wait at a local scrap metal yard and caught a man with a big bag of electrical components, who looked exactly like the world's most wanted man....

(Read to the bottom before throwing things at your monitor -- JB) Mexico deserves better from its Southwestern neighbors than threats from the local vigilance committee. But Arizona lately is making headlines for bands of its citizens, many of them armed, who have begun patrolling the border and turning back or even detaining Mexicans who try to cross illegally. It's not clear exactly how many people are involved. The story, redolent of the wild, Old West, appeals to citified national news media and is vulnerable to exaggeration. But leaders of Grand Canyon State groups such as Ranch Rescue and Civil...

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use. MEDFORD, Ore. (AP) — Three National Guardsmen beat up or harassed minorities and others in a ``mission'' to clean up the community, and one of the suspects killed himself at the scene of the most recent attack, police said. The two other men were arrested at a motel where they allegedly beat the Indian owner, whom they had mistaken for an Arab. The owner suffered cuts and bruises. In earlier attacks, a homeless white man was beaten with a club and called a disgrace to his race, and black teenagers were...

Grijalva invites Ashcroft to see vigilante 'justice'ARIZONA DAILY STAR; Tuesday, January 14, 2003 U.S. Rep. Raul Grijalva stepped up his campaign to crack down on vigilantes Monday by inviting Attorney General John Ashcroft to come to Southern Arizona to see the threat they pose to border security. The Tucson Democrat told Ashcroft in a letter that the federal government's silence on the issue is "seen as giving official sanction to this racist movement, both by the perpetrators and victims of vigilante 'justice.' " Ashcroft's voice, Grijalva added, "is needed now to make clear that private armed groups claiming law enforcement...

Rauuul continues to display his absurdity... Grijalva is sworn in, ‘ready to get to work'Citizen Staff Report Jan. 7, 2003 Former Pima County Supervisor Raúl M. Grijalva was sworn in today as the first representative from southern Arizona's Congressional District 7. The ceremony took place in the House chamber of the U.S. Capitol. "I'm grateful to be here in Washington, D.C., representing the people of District 7," Grijalva said. "I was elected to make sure that southern Arizona has a strong and distinct voice in Congress and I am ready to get to work." Grijalva said his first official act...

MARACAIBO, Venezuela - The word spread quickly as the bodies of eight thieves, glue sniffers and neighborhood bullies began turning up in April, shotgun blasts on their chests, notes signed ''The Anonymous Avenger'' stuck in their clothes: The police were executing criminals again. Probably not the same police officers who killed 16 victims in this gritty oil port in 1995 and left behind the same notes. Probably younger, meaner cops -- two victims were also stabbed or garroted. But almost certainly the cops. Across the country, police death squads are killing more of Venezuela's suspected criminals, or simply poor people....