Manhunt Continues for Drug Kingpins Claiming to be Moorish Sovereigns
The manhunt for three fez-wearing drug dealers, claiming to be “Moorish nationals” – the kissing cousins of the antigovernment “sovereign citizens” movement – continued today after the men disappeared on Monday just as a federal jury in Detroit was finding them guilty in one of the largest narcotics cases in the city’s history.
“It was a very significant drug case,” Deputy U.S. Marshal Rob Watson told Hatewatch today. “Any lead we get we’re taking seriously and following to exhaustion.”
Before they fled, the men – Earnest Proge and brothers Carlos Powell and Eric Powell – faced possible life sentences and $10 million fines.
They men were out on bond during the trial and never showed up for the reading of the verdict. Carlos Powell, according to The Detroit News, cut his ankle tether at 12:33 p.m. Monday –– 18 minutes after the verdict was read.
In February, prior to the start of the nearly two-week trial, someone wrote a letter to the court, saying that because of the men’s “Status, and Nationality” as members of the Moorish Science Temple of America (MSTA), the Greensboro, N.C.-based group “will stand as surety against any and all claims that have been brought against them. “If there is an amount to be paid to settle this case on their behalf,” the letter continued, “please forward any and all bills to: Moorish Science Temple of America, c/o Sheik Martin El, Trustee.”
Understandably, the judge dismissed the letter as frivolous, according to The News, adding that another court filing said that the fezzes the men wore each day to court were “religious headdress that must be worn to distinction.”
So-called Moors are typically black nationalists who, like antigovernment “sovereign citizens,” deny the jurisdiction and authority of the government. For the Moors, that denial is based on the theory that they are the real sovereign natives of North America, and that the government later established by white European settlers has no right to rule them. There are numerous Moorish groups around the country. Some of the groups, including the Washington D.C.-based Moorish Science Temple of America Inc. that was founded in 1913, strenuously protest being lumped in with sovereign citizens, saying that they are, in fact, law-abiding citizens of the United States.
But claiming to be a Moorish national seems to be an increasingly popular tactic being used by all manner of criminals – from squatters in Memphis, Tenn., to a convicted Chicago bank robber named Joseph “Jose” Banks – as a last ditch legal maneuver to avoid consequence for their crimes.
Banks claimed to be a Moorish national and exempt from federal laws such as bank robbery. When the jury convicted him anyway, he made a daring, Hollywood-style jailbreak in 2012, shimmying 15 stories down the side of a high-rise lockup in downtown Chicago on a rope of bed sheets. He was recaptured two days later.
Back behind bars in 2013, Banks wrote the Chicago Sun-Times a letter detailing his escape and admitting to “the Moorish Sovereign act put on by me in court at trial.”
During his bank-robbing career, Banks reportedly made off with hundreds of thousands of dollars. The three Moors of Detroit, as well, were raking in millions.
Carlos Powell, the group’s alleged kingpin, was among the most prolific drug dealers in metro Detroit, according to The News. During the years-long investigation, the paper reported, agents seized 66 pounds of heroin, 12 kilograms of cocaine, 1,000 pounds of marijuana and more than $21 million in cash all tied to Powell's criminal enterprise.
