Five residents of a squalid New Mexico compound where a child was found dead last year pleaded not guilty on Thursday to terror charges that they were plotting to kill United States government officials, military personnel and F.B.I. employees.

While federal authorities say the five family members were planning deadly attacks, their lawyers contend they were charged because they are Muslim.

The new charges are included in an indictment handed up last week. The two men and three women — who have been incarcerated on weapons charges since August, after the authorities raided the compound — stand accused of running a terror training camp and using malnourished children, who lived on site, as pawns in their plot.

Their remote desert outpost near the Colorado border was used to store firearms and served as a base from which to prepare to “engage in jihad, to die as martyrs, and to engage in violent acts,” according to the recent indictment.