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North Dakota authorities claim rocks and 'improvised weapons' used at standoff

Wednesday, November 23, 2016

The November 20, 2016, assault took place at the Backwater Bridge, a public roadway in North Dakota. Photo courtesy Morton County Sheriff's Department

Authorities in North Dakota continue to deny causing severe injuries to #NoDAPL resisters in North Dakota.

The North Dakota Highway Patrol on Tuesday released photos that it said represented "improvised weapons." The photos depicted rocks, slingshots and an item that was described as a propane tank "rigged" as an explosive device.

In another press release, the Highway Patrol blamed pipeline resisters for causing their own injuries. As the assault on Sunday dragged into the early morning hours on Monday, Lieutenant Tom Iverson said a "woman" was hurt as the result of an undetermined "explosion."

“The subjects were given opportunities to retreat back, but it became obvious that they were tampering with the vehicle or planting a device,” Iverson said in the release. “Their strange mannerisms led law enforcement to believe they were there for a purpose with a calculated effort to either cause harm or breach the line.”

And Morton County Sheriff Kyle Kirchmeier joined in the denial campaign by posting similar photos on Facebook, including one of a rock which purportedly had "Mni Wiconi" -- "Water is Life" -- written on it. He claimed the items were found around the same time that a "woman" was taken away from the scene.

The "woman" referenced by Iverson and Kirchmeier appears to be Sophia Wilansky, 21, whose left arm was "pretty much blown off" during the incident, her father said on Tuesday. She has already undergone surgeries at the Hennepin County Medical Center in Minnesota and is facing more procedures in the hopes of saving her shattered arm and hand.

"My daughter is very clear about the fact that she was being shot at the time," Wayne Wilansky, who is an attorney, told Democracy Now! "She has got bullet wounds on her body and she was backing away at the time and she was trying to reach for a shield so that the bullets wouldn’t hit her at the time that the concussion grenade hit her in the arm and exploded."

The behaviors from the North Dakota law enforcement follow a familiar pattern started by Kirchmeier late in the summer. He's repeatedly accused #NoDAPL resisters of committing crimes even though the overwhelming majority of those who have been arrested are only facing low-level misdemeanors. Efforts to elevate the charges to the felony level have largely been rejected in the court system.

Kirchmeier, and now Iverson, also have repeatedly claimed that incidents remain under "investigation" even as they appear certain that crimes were committed by resisters and not by others.

"I’d say the comments from the Morton County Sheriff’s Department are utterly absurd and ridiculous and not worthy of a shred of belief," Wayne Wilanksy told Democracy Now!

In a separate appearance on Democracy Now!, author Jeremy Scahill, a co-founder of The Intercept, an online publication, said Dakota Access has hired TigerSwan to conduct security at the pipeline site. The firm boasts of a workforce predominantly composed of retired military service members.

"You have this convergence of all that has been so wrong in the post-9/11 world, with these big environment-destroying companies, the stripping even further of indigenous rights, private security forces, the brutality against protesters, the paramilitarization of law enforcement,' Scahill told Democracy Now!

Sunday's assault occurred in an area slightly north of the main #NoDAPL encampment. It's near the place where Dakota Access plans to drill under the Missouri River even though it lacks an easement to do so from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.