"The Moors claim to be about Black liberation and opportunity, and uplifting Black people. But he is literally oppressing me and taking what’s mine as a Black woman."

Said Shanetta Little, the legal owner of a house in Newark, quoted in "She Bought Her Dream Home. Then a ‘Sovereign Citizen’ Changed the Locks. A New Jersey woman was preyed upon by a fast-growing extremist group that claims its members are sovereign Moors, not bound by U.S. laws" (NYT).

Ms. Little found herself in her yard on Ivy Street on a June afternoon as a police SWAT team negotiated with a man who had broken in, changed her locks and hung a red and green flag in its window. He claimed he was a sovereign citizen of a country that does not exist and for whom United States laws do not apply. 

Ms. Little was a victim of a ploy known as paper terrorism, a favorite tactic of an extremist group that is one of the fastest growing, according to government experts and watchdog organizations. Known as the Moorish sovereign citizen movement, and loosely based around a theory that Black people are foreign citizens bound only by arcane legal systems, it encourages followers to violate existent laws in the name of empowerment....

Before the man broke into her house and changed the locks, Little had received strange documents in the mail from "Lenapehoking of the Al Moroccan Empire at New Jersey State Republic." This was not an isolated case. The Moorish sovereign movement is, we're told, actively pursuing their idea of the law "across the country, filing spurious lawsuits and burying county clerk offices in flurries of fake deeds, liens and other documents."

"'Moorish sovereign groups adhere to 'the notion that African Americans had special rights because of a 1780s treaty with Morocco, as well as the belief that African Americans were descended from African "Moors"...'"

"'... and often as well the belief that African Americans were also a people indigenous to the Americas.' On its website, the group says that 'sovereignty and nationality can be considered synonymous,' and that it considers Moorish Americans to be the 'aboriginal people of the land.' In a video Saturday morning, an unidentified member of the group disputed the sovereign-citizen moniker, saying, 'We are not anti-government. We are not anti-police, we are not sovereign citizens, we’re not Black identity extremists.'."

From "What to know about Rise of the Moors, an armed group that says it’s not subject to U.S. law" (WaPo). Here's the previous post about the 9-hour stand-off with the police.

The WaPo article quotes Freddy Cruz of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC): "Especially with these sovereign Moorish groups, there is this idea that is rooted in ancient civilizations like the Aztecs, the Olmecs, Incas... They have this belief that the U.S. government has no right to be enforcing or creating laws in territories that don’t belong to them, so they see themselves as forming their own sovereign nation....What we are seeing as well as the uptick in activity is the idea that these sovereign-citizen groups like Rise of the Moors, they try to prey on Black and Brown individuals... Typically with this idea that society is unfair and it preys on individuals who are maybe down on their luck, they have a place to turn where these groups promise a more fair and equitable society."

"Eleven 'heavily armed' members of a fringe group called Rise of the Moors were arrested on a Massachusetts highway Saturday..."

"...following a bizarre nine-hour standoff with law enforcement that included hostage negotiators.... The nature of the group is unclear as police continue to investigate. 'We’re not anti-government. We’re not anti-police. We’re not sovereign citizens. We’re not black identity extremists,' the man in the video said. 'We haven’t violated any laws.' The men claim 'to be from a group that does not recognize our laws,' the Wakefield Police Department said in a statement. 'No threats were made, but these men should be considered armed and dangerous.'"

The NY Post reports.