(Reuters) - A ninth member of a Christian militia group accused of conspiring to kill law enforcement officers to trigger a wider war against the U.S. government appeared before a federal judge on Tuesday.
Joshua Matthew Stone, 21, the son of the group's leader, 45-year-old David Brian Stone, surrendered on Monday night after evading authorities over the weekend as they conducted raids across four midwestern states to round up the group.
Seven other members of the group, called the Hutaree, appeared before U.S. Magistrate Judge Donald Scheer in the U.S. District Court in Detroit on Monday. An eighth suspect, who was arrested in Illinois, was arraigned separately in Indiana.
The government has asked that all nine defendants be held without bail. A detention hearing is scheduled for Wednesday.
A federal grand jury indictment unsealed this week charged the group with seditious conspiracy, attempted use of weapons of mass destruction and possessing a firearm during a crime of violence.
The eight men and one woman were accused of plotting to kill a police officer in Michigan and then ambush the law enforcement officers who attended his funeral with improvised explosive devices to be delivered with projectiles. They planned to fall back and fight from fortified and booby-trapped positions, the indictment said...
