Funeral to draw large crowd in support of Oregon protester

Occupation leader Ammon Bundy and 15 others are charged with conspiracy to impede officers of the United States.

As the occupation at a federal wildlife reserve in Burns, Oregon, pushes past the one month mark, four protesters remain at the refuge, while 16 – including the four remaining protesters – were indicted on federal charges Thursday. Among those named in the indictment are the protesters who were arrested last week during a botched traffic stop that left protester “LaVoy” Finicum dead under what some consider to be questionable circumstances.

The holdouts want assurances they won’t be arrested if they leave.

Eleven people associated with the standoff at the Malheur refuge in rural Harney County had been arrested and charged with federal felony offenses.

Bundy called his jailed followers “political prisoners” who were just trying to educate ranchers and others about their constitutional rights on federal lands and abuses by federal authorities. In Burns, several hundred people gathered Monday both in support and in opposition to the occupation.

A spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Portland said Cox and O’Shaughnessy had been released from custody while all others remain in custody.

Four other people remain on the federal property as of Thursday.

Bundy made reference to the death last week of one of the lead occupiers, Robert Finicum, who died in a confrontation with Federal Bureau of Investigation agents and OR state troopers that also resulted in the arrest of Bundy and others.

Among the occupiers was Jon Ritzheimer, an Arizona man who gained notoriety for organizing anti-Islam demonstrations and LaVoy Finicum, who acted as spokesman for the group and was killed by police after he drove out of the refuge and tried to run a roadblock.

The Malheur refuge has 17 employees, and they haven’t able to work there because of the occupation.

From November until the end of January, the indictment says, defendants went to Harney County “to intimidate and coerce” residents “in order to effectuate the goals of the conspiracy”. The occupiers have said Finicum had his hands in the air when he was shot. The FBI quickly released video footage of the shooting and said it showed Finicum twice reaching toward where he had a holstered handgun.

Federal authorities fear those tensions could pop up elsewhere and have increased security at national wildlife refuges in southern Oregon, Northern California and Nevada and put the rest of the preserves nationwide on heightened alert.