Posted on Sat Jul 12 2003 12:33:24 GMT-0400 (Eastern Daylight Time) by wimpycat

NORTH AUGUSTA–A man who says he doesn’t abide by U.S. laws held police at bay for seven hours Friday before surrendering peacefully, Aiken County sheriff’s deputies said.

Douglas Ray, 51, had been convicted of tax evasion and was wanted Friday for violating probation. Deputies and state agents came to his house around 6 a.m. to serve a warrant, sheriff’s Lt. H.B. Eagerton said.

Ray refused to go with authorities, and deputies backed off, fearing he might be armed. Ray’s wife, daughter and several children were inside the two-story brick house off a busy residential street in North Augusta, about six miles from the Georgia state line, Eagerton said.

Deputies and State Law Enforcement Division agents negotiated with Ray for hours by phone before he agreed to speak with his pastor and Sheriff Michael Hunt, Eagerton said.

“He came out, met with the sheriff in the yard and turned himself in,” Eagerton said shortly after the standoff ended about 1 p.m.

But Ray’s wife and daughter said authorities got the wrong man. They say Ray’s real name is Jalil Bey and they are Moorish Americans who have international immunity from U.S. laws.

The Nation of Moorish Americans’ Web site says members “are not technically ‘citizens’ within the meaning of the Constitution of the United States.” It lists the founder of the group as Minister Louis Bey.

“They don’t have anything on Jalil Bey,” said Ray’s wife, Afu Bey.

Authorities insisted they had the right man.

Ray, a truck driver at the Savannah River Site nuclear complex, was sentenced in 2002 to five years’ probation and fined $10,000 for tax evasion. He failed to make payments on the fine and sent three threatening letters to his probation officers, said Peter O’Boyle, parole department spokesman.

The sweep was part of a Department of Probation, Parole and Pardon Services’ weeklong roundup of fugitives. Agents had arrested more than 300 probation and parole violators across the state since the sweep began Monday, said Jim McClain, director of the parole department.

The Beys said state agents and deputies broke the law Friday morning when they illegally came to serve the warrant.

“You had people banging on your door at 5 a.m. They do not tell you who they are,” said Ray’s daughter Isis Bey. “As far as I am concerned, that’s trespassing. There are ‘no trespassing’ signs in my yard.”

Eagerton said other than the tax evasion charge, deputies had only one other run-in with Ray.

About six months ago he wrote a letter to the sheriff saying he was immune from U.S. laws and “if necessary he could use deadly force” to keep law officers off his property, Eagerton said.