The eight men and one woman were accused of plotting to kill a police officer in Michigan and then ambush the law enforcement officers who attended his funeral with improvised explosive devices to be delivered with projectiles. They planned to fall back and fight from fortified and booby-trapped positions, the indictment said.
The indictment said the group believed the attacks would "serve as a catalyst for a more widespread uprising" against the government.
The group's website,
hutaree.com, says the term Hutaree means "Christian warrior" and characterizes the group as "preparing for the end time battles to keep the testimony of Jesus Christ alive."
Michael Lindsay, a political sociologist at Rice University in Houston and a leading expert on U.S. evangelicalism, said the Hutaree's outward Christian trappings should not obscure its core purpose.
"This movement is far more political than it is theological," he told Reuters.
"The apocalyptic tenor of the movement is in many ways window dressing ... the things that anger them and mobilize them are almost entirely political."
Lindsay called the group "very fringe" and said they would "never find support from a mainstream pastor or prominent public individual."
Earlier this month, a report warned that the number of right-wing groups that see the U.S. government as their enemy more than doubled in the last year, fanned by anger over the economy and a backlash against the policies of President Barack Obama.
The report by the Southern Poverty Law Center said 512 such anti-government groups were active in the United States last year, a leap from 149 in 2008.
