A New Mexico judge has received death threats after granting bail to five adults arrested at a desert compound.
Judge Sarah Backus said the prosecution had not convinced her the defendants were a threat to the community.
Police had arrested the two men and three women at a remote compound raided in the search for a missing three-year-old boy, Abdul-Ghani Wahhaj.
Officers found 11 starving children and the buried remains of a toddler in a case that has shocked the country.
Judge Backus granted the five bail after a hearing on Monday, ordering that all five must wear ankle monitors and have weekly contact with their lawyers.
The boy's father, Siraj Wahhaj, was one of the five arrested.
But her decision has caused a storm of protest.
A spokesperson for the New Mexico courts said a caller told the judge “he wished her throat were slit”, with another saying he “hoped someone would come and smash her head in”.
An email to Ms Backus called her an “Islamic terror sympathiser”.
The Taos County court building was evacuated briefly on Tuesday after the threats.
Judge Backus said at the hearing that…
