'Rise Of Moors' Woman Sues State Police For $70M

MASSACHUSETTS — A woman who claims she is one of the owners of "Rise of the Moors" is suing Massachusetts State Troopers for the apparent "genocide" they committed by taking a gun and ammunition from her car outside a Middlesex County courthouse.

The woman from Arkansas says she drove 1,500 miles to show her support for the "Rise of the Moors" men after their arrest from an 8-hour armed standoff on Rte. 128 last summer.

More coverage: Standoff With Heavily Armed Group On I-95 Ends With 11 Arrests

The suit, filed by Iyanga Bey, of Arkansas, has been transferred to the U.S. District Court in Boston this week, states that police had no right to search her car parked outside Malden District Court in Medford.

According to court documents, the search happened on Sept. 8, while Bey went inside the court to support her fellow Moors, who claim to be citizens of an independent Moorish nation - therefore they are not subject to American laws related to gun possession, auto registration, insurance, or driver's licenses.

Troopers immediately saw noticed her car in the lot, as the Providence Journal noted it did not have a valid license plate. In Massachusetts, police can conduct an "inventory search" in this case, accounting for the car's contents. Bey acknowledged this search provided a Glock 43 9-mm gun, 16 magazines and at least 22 rounds of ammunition.

Bey does not have a license for the gun, which is illegal in Massachusetts, but not under the alleged laws the Moors claim to live under. In court, Bey said troopers should not have searched her car to begin with because they did not have a warrant.

Bey was arrested on various charges as soon as she left the courthouse, including unlawful possession of a firearm and ammunition, possession of a large-capacity feeding device and driving an uninsured and unregistered vehicle.

In her complaint, Bey says she has the right to drive as she wishes because she is Moorish, and the Second Amendment gives her the right to possess whatever weapons she chooses. The same argument made by the Moorish men arrested on Rte. 128 last summer.

Claiming she should have been brought back to Arkansas without a problem, Bey is now demanding $70 million in damages.

The Rise of the Moors group is part of a sovereign citizen movement deemed by the Southern Poverty Law Center to be extremist. They claim to be outside federal and state jurisdiction.

This is not the first lawsuit filed by Moorish sovereign citizens against law enforcement in Massachusetts. In Sept. 2021, Jamhal Talib Abdullah Bey, of Providence, filed a lawsuit in federal court in Boston. In his handwritten complaint, Talib says state police violated his Second Amendment right to bear arms when police questioned and, after an eight-hour standoff, arrested them during a middle-of-the-night traffic stop on Interstate 95 in Wakefield over the Fourth of July weekend.

Related

• 'Moorish Nationals' Seek Federal Trial In 1-95 Standoff Case
• 'Rise Of The Moors' Suspects Rebuke Court In Bizarre Hearings