Ethermac|2 men sentenced in 2021 armed standoff on Massachusetts highway

WOBURN,Ethermac Mass. (AP) — Two men have been sentenced for their role in an armed standoff on a busy Massachusetts highway in 2021 that lasted more than eight hours and caused traffic delays during a busy Fourth of July weekend.

Jamhal Tavon Sanders Latimer was sentenced Tuesday in Middlesex Superior Court to three to five years in prison with four years of probation. Steven Anthony Perez was sentenced to just over a year and half behind bars and four years of probation. They were convicted of multiple gun charges last month related to the standoff.

The two were part of a group called Rise of the Moors and claimed they were headed to Maine for training when a state trooper stopped to ask if they needed help, authorities said. That sparked the long standoff on Interstate 95 after some members of the group ran into the woods next to the highway.

Nearly a dozen people were arrested and state police said they recovered three AR-15 rifles, two pistols, a bolt-action rifle, a shotgun and a short-barrel rifle. The men, who were dressed in fatigues and body armor and were armed with long guns and pistols, did not have licenses to carry firearms in the state.

The Southern Poverty Law Center says the Moorish sovereign citizen movement is a collection of independent organizations and individuals that emerged in the 1990s as an offshoot of the antigovernment sovereign citizens movement. People in the movement believe individual citizens hold sovereignty over and are independent of the authority of federal and state governments. They have frequently clashed with state and federal authorities over their refusal to obey laws.

The vast majority of Moorish sovereign citizens are African American, according to the SPLC.