Eatonton --- A long-simmering conflict between government officials and an Egyptian-styled sect came to a head Wednesday as authorities arrested its leading figure and raided its headquarters here.
Dwight York, the 56-year-old leader of the United Nuwaubian Nation of Moors, was charged with three counts of knowingly transporting children with the intent of having the minors engage in sexual activity, said Maxwell Wood, U.S. attorney for Middle Georgia.
His longtime associate, Kathy Johnson, faces a similar charge.
On conviction, each felony count could result in a maximum of 15 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
The raid at its height involved 200 FBI agents and 80 sheriff's deputies from four Middle Georgia counties, as well as helicopters. It was the culmination of a four-year joint investigation by county and federal agents.
Though authorities were prepared to meet resistance, they said they encountered no violence during the raid or arrests, and there were no injuries.
Johnson and York --- who also faces a charge of having knowingly traveled in interstate commerce for the purpose of engaging in an unlawful sexual act --- were held at an undisclosed location while agents armed with search warrants spent hours combing over the group's compound in a pyramid-studded pasture just outside Eatonton.
"Some of the approximately 80 to 100 people on the farm scattered when the raid began," said Putnam County Sheriff Howard Sills. "But there were no incidents of violence."
York, often referred to by followers as the "Master Teacher," has claimed to be from a galaxy called Illyuwn and has prophesied that in 2003, spaceships will descend and pick up a chosen 144,000 people for a rebirth.
The Nuwaubians have had repeated conflicts with Putnam County authorities about the way they use their land, including allegations that they operated an unlicensed nightclub. At the height of tensions, members staged paramilitary exercises in view of a nearby road.
Sheriff Sills, who has been a central figure in the conflict, said it was "a federal decision" to use helicopters and heavily armed agents to make the arrests and execute the search warrants Wednesday.
Federal authorities said the charges stem from trips that York and Johnson made in March and April of 1993 with minors.
Another such trip by York, to Florida, took place three years later, according to the federal indictment.
A Putnam County grand jury is expected to convene soon to weigh indicting York on similar state charges, Sills said.
York served three years in a New York jail in the 1960s for assault, resisting arrest and carrying a concealed weapon.
York, in a 1998 interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, denied reports the FBI had linked his group with a wide range of criminal conduct.
"They're making me out to be a monster," York said. "I'm not a monster."
According to a 1993 report by FBI agents gathering intelligence on suspected domestic terrorism organizations, York's group started out in Brooklyn in the mid-1970s, then calling itself the Nubian Islamic Hebrews.
Members of the group were connected to such crimes as welfare fraud, extortion, bank robbery and arson, the FBI said.
York purchased the Putnam County land in 1993 and moved the group there.
After dressing for a time in Western garb, the group settled on an Egyptian motif and called themselves the United Nuwaubian Nation of Moors.
Members built pyramids, obelisks and statuary on the part of the property that fronts Ga. 142 between Eatonton and Shadydale.
They dubbed the property the Egypt of the West.
A recurring theme in Nuwaubian tracts is that American blacks are not descended from slaves but instead from the pyramid builders of ancient Egypt.
In April 1998, Sills padlocked a nightclub called Club Ramses on the Nuwaubian property.
The sheriff said it had been operating without a liquor license in a building permitted only as a storage facility. The Nuwaubians were fined $45,000.
York and other Nuwaubian officials accused the county of racial harassment and discrimination. Battles over use of the property have continued on and off in recent years.
In the mid-1990s, crowds as large as 10,000 or more came to the Nuwaubians' farm for the annual festival of Savior's Day, which is celebrated on York's birthday, June 26.
Police estimate as many as 150 to 200 adherents lived on the farm in those years but say now there are fewer than 100.
In recent years York has sought to establish bases for the group in other Georgia cities, including Athens and Macon.
Staff writers Rick Badie and Brian Feagans contributed to this article.