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Amber Alert for Mom and Dad

April 5, 2013 permalink

Hakken family

Here is a story that should be impossible, but occurs regularly. Police have issued an Amber alert for father Joshua Michael Hakken, his wife Sharyn Patricia Hakken and their children, Chase Hakken, 2, and Cole Hakken, 4. The family troubles began last June when Joshua attended an ant-government rally in Louisiana. Police arrested him and child protectors seized his children. The press, aside from Alex Jones, is treating him as a monster. Enclosed are reports from Infowars and CNN.

Have you seen a mother and father caring for two small children? If so, call the police immediately!

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Corporate Media Demonizes Parents Who Fled With Children

Comment by Alex Jones: After armed police kidnapped children and parents fight back, the parents are demonized as anti-government terrorists.

A news report aired by a television station in Tampa Bay, Florida covering the alleged kidnapping of two children by a father described as “antigovernment” prominently features an Infowars.com stenciled logo, insinuating that Alex Jones and his popular website influenced the man’s alleged criminal behavior.

According to the news report, Joshua Michael Hakken and his wife Sharyn Hakken are on the run in Florida after kidnapping their own two children, Chase and Cole Hakken, from Sharyn’s mother today.

The mother had legal custody of the children after they were grabbed by Child Protective Services in Louisiana following the arrest of Joshua Michael Hakken at an “antigovernment” rally held at a hotel in Slidell, Louisiana.

Hakken was allegedly in possession of marijuana when he was arrested. Police said the father was “under the influence of narcotics” at the time of his arrest and “speaking kind of out of his mind a little bit.”

In a February, 2012 web post, Hakken, an Air Force veteran and mechanical engineer, characterized himself as “absolutely devoted to life, liberty, the rights of the individual and the Constitution of the United States of America.” (Mike Riggs of Reason.com discovered the information detailing Hakken’s supposedly “anti-government” remarks.)

In an Amber Alert issued after the alleged abduction, the Hillsborough County Sheriffs Department described the Hakkens as “anti-government” and said the couple “are considered armed and dangerous.”

Joshua Hakken faces two counts of kidnapping, two counts of interference in child custody, two counts of child neglect, one count of false imprisonment, burglary with a battery, and grand theft auto. Under Florida’s mandatory minimum sentencing law – known as 10-20-Life – he could face life in prison if he was armed when he took his children back from the clutches of the CPS.

Allegedly armed with a firearm, Hakken had previously attempted to gain custody of his children at a foster care facility in Louisiana. He left after he could not get inside the building.

The Hakken story is grist for the establishment’s corporate media mill. Over the last few years, it has churned an endless stream of lurid propaganda designed to demonize constitutionalists as racist terrorists determined to sow violence and indoctrinate followers with hatred. The narrative is largely a creation of the Southern Poverty Law Center. The organization specializes in issuing highly misleading descriptions of patriots and constitutionalist organizations.

In early March, the SPLC sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano urging the government to establish a task force to investigate the supposed domestic terror threat posed by the likes of Alex Jones, We Are Change, Oath Keepers, the Constitution Party, the Tyranny Response Team and thousands of other Americans outside of the orbit of the establishment.

“In the last four years, we have seen a tremendous increase in the number of conspiracy-minded, antigovernment groups as well as in the number of domestic terrorist plots,” said the president and CEO of the SPLC, J. Richard Cohen, who warned of another Oklahoma City terrorist plot.

Additionally, the Hakken story feeds into the government’s narrative about the domestic terror threat posed by U.S. military veterans. In February, we reported on stepped up efforts by the federal government to portray veterans with medical issues and PTSD as dangerous and therefore subject to having their Second Amendment rights nullified by the government.

Source: Infowars


Armed ‘anti-government’ parents abduct children from Florida home

(CNN) — Police believe a Louisiana man abducted his two young sons early Wednesday after breaking into the Florida home of the children’s grandmother and tying her up.

The boys had been removed from the care of Joshua Michael Hakken and his wife, Sharyn Patricia Hakken, last year, and on Tuesday the couple’s parental rights were terminated in Louisiana, investigators say.

Hakken, described as an anti-government protester, is believed to be armed, according to the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office in Tampa. Investigators believe his wife is with him.

The sheriff’s office told CNN there have been ongoing issues with Hakken since he attended an anti-government rally somewhere in Louisiana in June of last year. He was arrested at the rally on multiple drug charges, officials said.

Louisiana authorities have told Florida investigators that the children were initially placed in temporary foster care after being taken away from the Hakkens. Sometime later, investigators allege, the couple went to the foster care center, armed, and tried unsuccessfully to enter it.

At some point over the past few months, the children were sent to Tampa to live with their grandmother, Patricia Hauser, the mother of Sharyn Hakken.

“Somehow they found out where the kids were and an Amber Alert is being issued now,” said Detective Larry McKinnon of the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office.

Sheriff’s investigators say Hakken entered Hauser’s home at 6:30 a.m. Wednesday. She has told police that he tied her up and fled with the children in her silver 2009 Toyota Camry. That vehicle was found later in the day just a couple of blocks away from the home. The sheriff’s office said the children now could be in a black 2006 GMC pickup registered to Hakken.

Authorities said the abducted children are Chase Hakken, 2, and Cole Hakken, 4. Both have brown hair and brown eyes and were last seen wearing pajamas.

“We suspect that the wife is with him. He has a history of being armed,” McKinnon said.

Investigators have brought in the FBI to help them track the family, who could have left the state of Florida by Wednesday afternoon.

Source: WGHP

TV reports vilifying the family sound like snippets from a sci-fi horror movie. Here is one from WFTS-TV on YouTube and a local copy (mp4).

Addendum: On April 8 it was announced that the family had arrived in Cuba.

Addendum: Back in the USSA.

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Cuba returns two U.S. children who were abducted in Tampa; Hakken parents face charges

Joshua Hakken and Sharyn Hakken
Joshua Hakken, 35, and Sharyn Hakken, 34, were arrested Wednesday morning and booked into the Hillsborough County Jail after Cuban authorities sent the family back to the U.S.

A saga that began when a troubled Tampa couple kidnapped their two young sons and sailed with them to the Marina Hemingway west of Havana has come to an end, with the parents booked into a Tampa-area jail on Wednesday morning.

Joshua Michael Hakken and his wife, Sharyn, were being held at the jail early Wednesday on charges including kidnapping, child neglect and interference with custody, according to a website for the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office.

On Tuesday, Cuba sent back the Hakken family to the United States. The case had threatened to revive memories of Elián González, the 5-year-old boy-rafter at the center of a heart-rending tug-of-war between his relatives in Miami and Cuba in 2000.

All four family members were aboard the U.S. plane, which arrived early Wednesday in Tampa.

The parents, who were handcuffed, were separated from the children, and also from each other. They were expected to face additional charges in Hillsborough County and jailed.

A statement from the U.S. Interests Section in Havana early Wednesday confirmed only that the children were being returned, although authorities in Hillsborough County confirmed that the parents were also aboard the plane.

“Tonight, thanks to a joint effort of the Department of State, FBI and U.S. Coast Guard, two U.S. citizen children are safely on their way home,” read a statement from the U.S. Interests Section. “We would like to express our appreciation to the Cuban authorities for their extensive cooperation to resolve this dangerous situation quickly.”

The statement provided no other details, citing the “sensitive nature of the ongoing investigation and privacy considerations.”

The children were being checked by medical officials while en route to Florida.

The saga began last week when Josh Hakken, 35, made off with sons Chase, 2, and Cole, 4, after breaking into the north Tampa home of his wife’s mother.

The three and Sharyn Hakken, 34, then sailed away in the Salty Paw, a blue 27-foot sailboat he had purchased recently.

A child-abduction alert and the manhunt for the family lasted five days, until the boat docked at the Marina Hemingway and Cuban immigration officials realized they had a couple of U.S. fugitives on their hands.

“Based on the press reports linking the Hakken couple with a case of kidnapping minors, the Cuban authorities communicated the presence of these people in Cuba to U.S. authorities,” the Foreign Ministry statement noted.

An employee of the marina’s operations center told El Nuevo Herald on Tuesday that a man named Hakken had arrived there Sunday or Monday aboard a U.S.-registered sailboat.

El Nuevo Herald reported late Monday that Cuban immigration officials were detaining the family at the fenced-in marina west of Havana. Foreign pleasure boats arriving in Cuba are required to dock at the marina and check in with migration officials.

The bizarre case initially raised some questions about whether Cuban authorities would agree to return the family to U.S. jurisdiction.

Cuba and the United States have not had a valid extradition treaty since the early days of the Castro revolution. Havana occasionally deports U.S. common criminals but shelters an estimated 70 U.S. fugitives it views as refugees from political persecution. Several Medicare fraudsters also have wound up in Cuba in more recent times.

Andy Gomez, a senior fellow at the University of Miami’s Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies, had predicted that Havana would indeed return the Hakkens to show “that when it involves children, politics should not interfere. Remember Elián?”

Arturo Lopez-Levy, a former Cuban intelligence analyst now at the University of Denver also predicted earlier in the day that Cuba would “send the whole family back to the United States as a goodwill gesture to U.S. authorities.”

Havana also was likely to have been put off by the Hakkens’ record, including their bizarre behavior during an incident last year in the Louisiana town of Slidell, when police found drugs and guns in the hotel room they were sharing with their kids. The Hakkens are both engineers and owned a business in Tampa.

“Both Mr. and Mrs. Hakken were acting in a bizarre manner that alarmed officers. They were talking about ‘completing their ultimate journey’ and were traveling across the country to ‘take a journey to the Armageddon,’” said a Slidell police department statement made public last week. Armageddon is the place where the Bible says the final battle between good and evil will be fought, and is usually associated with end-of-the-world prophesies.

Joshua Hakken was arrested on a drug charge and his sons were taken to a foster home, the police statement added. Two weeks later, the foster home called 911 to report that the father was trying to take his kids away at gunpoint, but Hakken ran away before police arrived.

The boys were later turned over to Sharyn Hakken’s mother in north Tampa, Patricia Hauser. Josh Hakken then broke into her house, tied her up and made off with the kids. Prosecutors had filed charges of kidnapping, false imprisonment and interference with child custody, among others, against the husband.

Source: Miami Herald

Addendum: In October 2014 the parents get 22 man-years in prison.

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Joshua Hakken gets maximum 15-year sentence after bizarre rant; wife gets seven years

TAMPA — A South Tampa man whose antigovernment paranoia led him and his wife to kidnap their two sons and sail to Cuba told a judge Thursday that he is a prophet, sent to unite people of all faiths and warn them of the coming end of days.

It seemed Joshua Hakken, 36, had been waiting all his life for the right audience. Before a judge sentenced him to 15 years in prison, the maximum under a plea agreement, Hakken stood and delivered a 30-minute speech drawing on Greek mythology, the Abrahamic religions and the latest headlines.

He had been reborn twice, survived attempts on his life and witnessed deer, snakes and foxes bow down to him, he said.

"I am Icarus," he told the judge. "I am Muhammad to the Shia Muslims. I am the … Joshua to the tribe of Judah. I am the Pahana, or the true white friend of the Hopi."

He apologized profusely to his wife for keeping this from her. But like most women presented a husband's claims to divinity, Sharyn Hakken, 36, did not appear impressed in the courtroom.

"I am the one written about in prophesies," Joshua Hakken said.

It was for this reason that CIA agents had been hunting him for years, he said. But it was when he was arrested in Louisiana in 2012 on drug charges and later lost custody of his children that he knew he could no longer abide the government's fiddling in his life. Last year, he decided to "rearm" himself and flee, stopping first to abduct his sons from their grandmother near Tampa.

Characterized as a bit player in the scheme, Sharyn Hakken was sentenced to seven years in prison, followed by 10 years of probation. With credit for time served, she could be released in about five years, her attorney said.

Arguing that mental illness played a major role in both of the Hakkens' lives and their decisions, Jorge Chalela, the attorney for Joshua Hakken, asked Hillsborough Circuit Court Judge Chet A. Tharpe to give his client supervised probation.

A 15-year prison sentence would cost taxpayers several hundred thousand dollars, he said, and do little but worsen Joshua's paranoid delusions. Prison could offer no mental health treatment beyond psychotropic medications, which Joshua has refused to take, he said, adding that a state mental hospital is the proper place.

"I am not, nor have I ever believed myself to be insane. That is the prognosis of the court doctors," Joshua told Tharpe. "I do want treatment, either to make these doctors aware of the logic of my arguments and convince them that these things happened to me … or to convince me that I'm wrong and I'm insane. I feel like I'm in two worlds right now."

Still, in addition to the 15-year sentence, Tharpe gave Joshua Hakken 15 years of probation.

"You made no attempt to reunify with your children, you didn't attend any of the court hearings, you did not avail yourself of any of the benefits of a family case plan," the judge said. "Rather you and your wife engaged in an elaborate scheme to defy the law."

Last week, the Hakkens accepted plea deals that spare them federal charges. In exchange, they admitted kidnapping their sons, then ages 2 and 4, and taking them and the family dog on a 300-mile voyage from Madeira Beach to Havana in spring 2013. Found badly sunburned but otherwise healthy, the Hakkens were picked up at the Hemingway Marina and arrested. The boys were reunited with their grandparents.

Documents, including a letter the couple wrote to the Cuban government, would later reveal they believed they were on a mission to seek refuge from the U.S. government.

Federal prosecutors had threatened to press charges against the couple if they were acquitted or received light sentences in Hillsborough. Prosecutors in New Orleans wanted to pile on, too. With these prospects dangling over them, they realized there was no path to victory.

The Hakkens, both college-educated engineers, subscribed to a long list of conspiracy theories. In their letter, they claimed to have discovered that U.S. officials were trying to control Americans' minds with "chemtrails" from airplanes. They feared retaliation and said they were being spied on by the National Security Agency.

By the time their case was ready for trial, three mental health experts had pronounced Joshua Hakken legally insane, though one later reneged.

Sharyn Hakken's case was not as strong — one doctor said she was insane, and one said she wasn't. Her attorney, Bryant Camareno, planned to argue that Joshua had coerced her to go along with his plans, verbally abusing her until her self-esteem was nonexistent. Joshua had also beaten his wife, Camareno said.

On Thursday, in her own address to Tharpe, Sharyn asked for leniency. She showed the judge the scars left from the cuts she had made in her arms as a depressed teenager and politely thanked everyone who had worked on her case, including prosecutors. She had lost all evidence of her formerly middle-class life, she said, listing her home, which is in foreclosure, her ties to family and friends, and her sons Cole and Chase, who she is barred from seeing. She plans to divorce Joshua.

"Judge, I wish I could explain why I stayed in this abusive relationship," she said. "I just don't know. I don't have a good reason."

Source: Tampa Bay Times

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