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10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Alexander Lightner.md
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---
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category: "Extremism & Violent Networks"
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tags:
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- Person
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- TerrorgramCollective
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- NeoNazi
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- Accelerationism
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- FederalCase
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- Florida
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- USA
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- TerroristConviction
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summary: "Alexander Lightner is a Venice, Florida Terrorgram Collective member who threatened a mass casualty event in a private Terrorgram chat in December 2023, was arrested by the FBI in January 2024, and was sentenced to 51 months in federal prison after pleading guilty to unlawful possession of a self-made firearm silencer."
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created: 2026-05-22
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updated: 2026-05-22
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born: 1997
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location: "Venice, Florida"
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---
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[[Alexander Lightner]] (born approximately 1997, [[Venice, Florida]]) was a member of the [[Terrorgram Collective]] who on December 29, 2023, made several threatening posts in an exclusive Terrorgram chat conveying his intent to commit violent acts motivated by far-right extremist ideology, including the phrases "2024 there shall be saints" and "Highscore shall be defeated" (a reference to surpassing the casualty count of previous far-right mass shooters). He was arrested by the [[FBI]] in January 2024, charged initially with interstate transmission of a threat to injure and unlawful possession of a silencer, and sentenced to 51 months (4 years, 3 months) in federal prison on June 12, 2025, by the [[Middle District of Florida]] after pleading guilty on March 11, 2025, to the firearm count.[^1]
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### Arrest and Evidence
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Federal agents executed a search warrant at Lightner's Venice residence within approximately a week of the December 2023 posts. The search recovered a self-made firearm silencer, several firearms, thousands of rounds of ammunition, a copy of Mein Kampf, and extremist literature with detailed descriptions of mass shooting events praising historical white supremacist killers. When interviewed by law enforcement, Lightner admitted the silencer was his and that he had manufactured it himself. He also admitted to making the threatening Telegram posts.
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The original indictment, filed January 2024 in the Middle District of Florida with a terrorism enhancement applied, charged Lightner with two counts: interstate transmission of a threat to injure (the threatening Terrorgram messages) and unlawful possession of an unregistered firearm (the silencer). The threat charge carried up to five years and the silencer charge up to ten, for a combined original maximum of fifteen years.
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### Plea and Sentencing
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Lightner pleaded guilty on March 11, 2025, to the unregistered firearm count only. The threat-related charge was resolved through the plea agreement. The [[Middle District of Florida]] DOJ press release characterizing him as a Terrorgram Collective member at sentencing was among the first federal filings to publicly attach the Terrorgram label to the Florida case.
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On June 12, 2025, Lightner, then 27, was sentenced to 51 months in federal prison. The sentence reflected his membership in the Terrorgram network and his possession of materials indicating operational intent (the silencer, ammunition, and extremist attack literature), even though the prosecution proceeded only on the firearm count.[^2]
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### Footnotes
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[^1]: U.S. Department of Justice, USAO-MDFL. "Venice Man Charged With Threatening To Commit A Mass Casualty Event And Unlawful Possession Of A Silencer." January 2024. https://www.justice.gov/usao-mdfl/pr/venice-man-charged-threatening-commit-mass-casualty-event-and-unlawful-possession; CNN. "FBI arrests Florida man accused of threatening 'mass casualty event.'" January 10, 2024. https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/10/us/fbi-florida-man-threatening-mass-casualty-event/index.html
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[^2]: U.S. Department of Justice, USAO-MDFL. "Terrorgram Member Sentenced To 51 Months In Prison For Possessing An Unregistered Firearm." June 12, 2025. https://www.justice.gov/usao-mdfl/pr/terrorgram-member-sentenced-51-months-prison-possessing-unregistered-firearm; WGCU. "Venice-based Terrorgram member sentenced to 51 months in prison." June 12, 2025. https://www.wgcu.org/section/crime/2025-06-12/venice-based-terrorgram-member-sentenced-to-51-months-in-prison
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10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Alisher Mukhitdinov.md
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---
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category: "Extremism & Violent Networks"
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tags:
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- Person
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- IronMarch
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- NeoNazi
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- Russia
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- Accelerationism
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- NetworkFounder
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- Pseudonym
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created: 2026-05-21
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updated: 2026-05-22
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summary: "Alisher Mukhitdinov, operating under the alias 'Alexander Slavros,' founded and administered Iron March from 2011 to 2017; his identification rests on a WHOIS record linking his personal site to a Moscow address, corroborated by BBC Russia's physical investigation in January 2020."
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born: "~1989"
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location: "Moscow, Russia"
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---
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Alisher Mukhitdinov, operating under the online alias "Alexander Slavros," is a [[Russia|Russian]] national of Uzbek family background who founded and administered [[Iron March]], the neo-fascist web forum that ran from 2011 to 2017 and served as the primary international incubator for neo-Nazi and neo-fascist organizations including [[Atomwaffen Division]]. His identification as Slavros rests on converging evidence traced to the WHOIS registration of his personal website and confirmed by a physical investigation conducted by [[BBC News Russian]] in January 2020. He has not been prosecuted in any jurisdiction.
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### The Identification Chain
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The identification of Mukhitdinov as "Alexander Slavros" developed in three documented stages across roughly eight months of journalism.
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The first public documentation appeared in [[SPLC]] Hatewatch on May 21, 2019, when reporter [[Michael Hayden (journalist)|Michael Hayden]] published a profile of the anonymous Slavros figure. The article established that the personal website slavros.org was registered in the name Alisher Mukhitdinov, with a listed address in the [[Tverskaya]] neighborhood of [[Moscow]].[^1] Alongside the WHOIS record, Hatewatch presented two categories of corroborating evidence: a 2014 Iron March propaganda video depicting two masked men posting Iron March stickers in Moscow, which Moscow-based journalist [[Alexey Kovalev]] reviewed for Hatewatch and confirmed as filmed on [[Old Arbat Street]]; and a pattern of Slavros forum posts referencing Moscow with the assumption that readers knew his location, including a January 1, 2012 post reading "It's already New Year in Moscow, hence the congratulations." The SPLC article noted the identification had been "long-speculated on the internet" before its publication, indicating the WHOIS record had been circulating in community discussions before journalistic confirmation.
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The second stage was [[Bellingcat]]'s December 19, 2019 investigation, "Transnational White Terror: Exposing Atomwaffen and the Iron March Networks," co-written by [[Alexander Reid Ross]], [[Emmi Bevensee]], and a researcher identified as ZC. The Bellingcat article covered Iron March and Atomwaffen comprehensively but characterized the slavros.org / Mukhitdinov connection as "leading to speculation that Slavros is Mukhitdinov's nom de guerre," treating it as the most credible hypothesis available rather than a confirmed identification.[^2]
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The definitive investigation was published by [[Andrei Soshnikov]] for BBC News Russian on January 30, 2020. Soshnikov located Mukhitdinov physically in southwest Moscow, living in a prefabricated apartment block; Mukhitdinov declined to speak with BBC. The investigation confirmed his educational history, his appearance and manner as described by classmates, and that he was not wanted by Russian law enforcement. BBC Russia investigated the theory, circulating in far-right online spaces, that Mukhitdinov had been pressured by Russian authorities for alleged fundraising for [[Azov Battalion]] (designated a terrorist organization under Russian law); Soshnikov found no evidence that any such fundraising occurred, and the reason for Iron March's November 2017 closure remains unestablished.[^3] Meduza published an English-language translation and summary of the BBC Russian investigation on February 4, 2020; this Meduza article is a secondary source derived from Soshnikov's reporting, not an independent verification.[^4]
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### The slavros.org WHOIS Record
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The foundational documentary link between Slavros and Mukhitdinov is the WHOIS registration of slavros.org, which listed Mukhitdinov's name and a Tverskaya-area Moscow address. Domain WHOIS records were publicly accessible without privacy masking during the period when this registration was made. The record is described by SPLC as "publicly available" at the time of their 2019 reporting. No independent journalist has reported accessing the raw DomainTools historical WHOIS record to verify the exact registration date, registrar, and full contact fields; the SPLC reporting describes what it found but does not reproduce the full record.
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The slavros.org domain is separate from ironmarch.org. No equivalent WHOIS attribution linking Mukhitdinov directly to the ironmarch.org domain registration has been reported by any source.
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### Iron March and the Slavros Persona
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Mukhitdinov developed Iron March under the "Alexander Slavros" alias, presenting himself as a Russian nationalist committed to a synthesis of neo-Nazism, fascist theory, and practical paramilitary organizing. The "Slavros" persona published a substantial body of theoretical writing on the forum, including "IronMarch.org: What to Do?" and "A Squire's Trial," a widely circulated text presenting neo-Nazi ideology through a Socratic dialogue format, both of which advocated for a form of neo-fascist vanguardism explicitly oriented toward eventual mass violence. This writing became influential within the forum's international community of members who were simultaneously building real-world organizations.
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The Slavros persona distinguished Iron March from older American white nationalist forums by its cosmopolitan, internationally focused neo-Nazism; the forum explicitly rejected what it framed as the parochialism of American white nationalism in favor of a global fascist solidarity framework.[^1]
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### Iron March Founding: ITPF and the Kacen Question
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Mukhitdinov did not create the forum that became Iron March. On June 26, 2010, an unidentified individual using the username "Kacen" created a forum called the [[International Third Positionist Federation]] (ITPF) on [[Bizhat]], an India-based hosting service. ITPF showed no activity until April 2011, when Mukhitdinov joined under the Slavros alias and began creating content, including a forum charter and discussion topics. In September 2011, ITPF's administrators migrated the forum to a new domain, ironmarch.org, using [[Invision Power Services]] forum software, and shut down the ITPF instance.[^5]
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Kacen was a co-administrator of Iron March alongside Slavros from the forum's inception, distinct from a third admin operating as "Woman in Black." Multiple sources confirm Kacen and Slavros were separate individuals. Community-level research published in Dogpatch Press in March 2022 suggested Kacen had been partially identified through a [[FurAffinity]] account operating as "Casen," with the same fursona used during his peak Iron March activity; Kacen is described as having entered the Deviantart neo-Nazi scene in the late 2000s before helping Mukhitdinov build the ITPF forum.[^6] No named investigative journalist has established Kacen's real-world identity with editorial vetting. As of May 2026, Kacen remains formally unidentified in open-source investigative reporting.
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The implication for Mukhitdinov's attribution is limited: he was not the sole architect of Iron March's predecessor, but the forum's ideological direction, theoretical output, and operational character from April 2011 forward were primarily his work under the Slavros alias.
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### AWD and the Forum's Organizational Output
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Iron March's most significant product was [[Atomwaffen Division]], which [[Brandon Russell]] announced to the forum community on October 12, 2015. The forum's other organizational outputs included the British neo-fascist group [[National Action]] and several European neo-Nazi formations. Mukhitdinov's theoretical writing provided part of the ideological framework that these organizations drew on, alongside [[James Mason]]'s *[[Siege]]*, which Iron March members rediscovered and aggressively promoted beginning in 2015.[^2]
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The forum attracted members from dozens of countries who were simultaneously producing theory, building organizations, and planning operations. Members who later committed acts of violence, founded violent organizations, or were prosecuted on terrorism-related charges had all been active Iron March participants. The forum's influence on the contemporary neo-Nazi accelerationist landscape is documented in the [[CTC West Point]] analysis of the "skull mask" neo-fascist network and in the broader post-Iron March prosecutorial record.
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### Educational Background and Self-Description
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Soshnikov's BBC investigation established that Mukhitdinov studied psychology at [[Moscow State University]], transferred to the political science faculty, was expelled, then enrolled in the political science faculty at [[Moscow State Institute of International Relations]] (MGIMO) and was expelled again, reportedly for missing a history examination. His parents had met as students at MGIMO. Classmates described him to BBC Russia as someone with dark skin and East Asian features who referred to himself as a "metanationalist," a term he used because he understood he was genealogically distant from the communities advocating an ethnic Russian or white European identity, yet still committed to a fascist political program. He was born approximately 1989; no sourced investigative reporting establishes a specific birth date beyond the approximate year.[^3]
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### The Nuritdin Mukhitdinov Connection
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A senior Soviet official named [[Nuritdin Mukhitdinov]] (1917-2008) was a close relative on Alisher's father's side; the precise degree of kinship is not specified in any sourced investigative account. Nuritdin Mukhitdinov fought in the [[Battle of Stalingrad]], later led the Uzbek SSR under [[Nikita Khrushchev]], served as a member of the [[Presidium of the Communist Party of the USSR]] between 1957 and 1961, and served as the [[Soviet Union]]'s ambassador to Syria from 1968 to 1977. His Soviet-era career is independently documented. No source has established any documented connection between this family lineage and Iron March's funding, operation, or closure.[^3]
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### MGIMO and Russian State Recruitment
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The report by the investigative outlet [[Proekt]], published October 18, 2019, documented active [[FSB]] and [[SVR]] recruitment of students at MGIMO, drawing on accounts from multiple MGIMO students contacted by intelligence recruiters during internships and embassy postings.[^7] This establishes that MGIMO functions as a pipeline for Russian intelligence recruitment. No investigative report has documented any contact between Russian intelligence and Mukhitdinov himself; the absence of prosecution in Russia is consistent with state indifference as much as state facilitation, and the BBC investigation found no evidence of any state relationship.
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### Forum Closure and Post-2017 Status
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Iron March closed in November 2017. The reason has not been established publicly. In November 2019, an anonymous individual published the forum's complete user database, exposing approximately 1,200 usernames alongside email addresses, IP addresses, and post histories. Journalists, researchers, and law enforcement agencies used the leak to identify Iron March participants who had moved on to violent organizations, and it contributed to a wave of prosecutions including cases against AWD members. The database leak enabled identification of those members; Mukhitdinov's identification as Slavros rested separately on the slavros.org WHOIS record and BBC Russia's subsequent physical investigation.
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Soshnikov's BBC investigation found Mukhitdinov still living in Moscow in early 2020 and not subject to any Russian criminal investigation. He has not appeared publicly online under any identified alias since November 2017. He has not been prosecuted in any jurisdiction as of May 2026.
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### Footnotes
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[^1]: Michael Hayden, "Mysterious Neo-Nazi Advocated Terrorism for Six Years Before Disappearance," *Hatewatch*, Southern Poverty Law Center, May 21, 2019. https://www.splcenter.org/resources/hatewatch/mysterious-neo-nazi-advocated-terrorism-six-years-disappearance/
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[^2]: Alexander Reid Ross, Emmi Bevensee, and ZC. "Transnational White Terror: Exposing Atomwaffen and the Iron March Networks," *Bellingcat*, December 19, 2019. https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2019/12/19/transnational-white-terror-exposing-atomwaffen-and-the-iron-march-networks/
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[^3]: Andrei Soshnikov, "«С самого детства я осознавал, что я русский»: Как москвич Алишер Мухитдинов создал главный фашистский форум в интернете," *BBC News Russian*, January 30, 2020. Archived at Meduza: https://meduza.io/feature/2020/01/30/s-samogo-detstva-ya-osoznaval-chto-ya-russkiy
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[^4]: Meduza (English). "How a Moscow man from an Uzbek family started the world's biggest neo-Nazi forum." February 4, 2020. https://meduza.io/en/feature/2020/02/04/how-a-moscow-man-from-an-uzbek-family-started-the-world-s-biggest-neo-nazi-forum (translation/summary of BBC Russian; not an independent investigation)
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[^5]: H.E. Upchurch, "The Iron March Forum and the Evolution of the 'Skull Mask' Neo-Fascist Network," *CTC Sentinel*, Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, December 2021. https://ctc.westpoint.edu/the-iron-march-forum-and-the-evolution-of-the-skull-mask-neo-fascist-network/
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[^6]: Dogpatch Press. "The fascist fringe of furry fans: the Eastern Orthodox connection." March 9, 2022. https://dogpatch.press/2022/03/09/fascist-fringe-eastern-orthodox/ (community-level research; Kacen's real name not established by named investigative reporter)
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[^7]: Proekt / The Moscow Times. "Russian Spies Are Recruiting MGIMO Students." October 18, 2019. https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2019/10/18/russian-spies-recruit-mgimo-students-proekt-a67796
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10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Arda Küçükyetim.md
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---
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category: "Extremism & Violent Networks"
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tags:
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- Person
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- TerrorgramCollective
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- NeoNazi
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- Accelerationism
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- Turkey
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- SaintsCulture
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- HateCrime
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born: 2006
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location: "Eskisehir, Turkey"
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created: 2026-05-21
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updated: 2026-05-21
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summary: "Arda Küçükyetim was a Turkish neo-Nazi who stabbed five people outside Tepebaşı Mosque in Eskisehir while livestreaming in August 2024, confirmed as Terrorgram-inspired in U.S. and Canadian criminal proceedings, and sentenced to 75 years in Turkish prison in 2025."
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---
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[[Arda Küçükyetim]] (born approximately 2006, [[Eskisehir, Turkey]]) attacked [[Tepebaşı Mosque]] in Eskisehir on August 12, 2024, stabbing five people, all mosque attendees, before his apprehension. All five victims survived. He livestreamed the attack through a vest-mounted camera on the platform [[Kick]] and had distributed his manifesto through a [[Telegram]] group he created prior to the attack. His manifesto cited [[Terrorgram Collective]]-associated "[[Saints Culture|saints]]" (including [[Brenton Tarrant]], [[Anders Breivik]], Stephen Paddock, and Timothy McVeigh) using the "saint" terminology precisely. The Terrorgram connection was confirmed in the U.S. sentencing documents for [[Dallas Humber]] (December 2025) and in [[Matthew Althorpe]]'s Canadian agreed statement of facts (March 27, 2026), both of which cited his attack as Terrorgram-inspired. [[Dallas Humber]] and [[Matthew Robert Allison]] were arrested by the FBI on September 5, 2024 - 24 days after the Eskisehir attack. Turkish courts sentenced Küçükyetim to 75 years and 5 months on September 24, 2025.[^1]
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### The Eskisehir Attack
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On the evening of August 12, 2024, at approximately 18:22 local time, Küçükyetim approached Tepebaşı Mosque in Eskisehir, Turkey, dressed in an assault vest, a helmet, and glasses bearing the [[Black Sun]] symbol (a neo-Nazi emblem) and began stabbing worshippers. The five victims were [[Tevfik Arslan]] (73), [[Cumali Özemek]] (57), [[Naşit Özyürek]] (89), [[Metin Korkmaz]] (66), and [[Cemal Altıntaş]] (53). All survived their wounds.
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He livestreamed the attack on Kick via a body-mounted camera. Prior to the attack, he had created a Telegram group where a contact distributed the manifesto, photographs, and supporting documents.
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### Manifesto and Ideology
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Küçükyetim's manifesto explicitly invoked the [[Saints Culture]] framework, using the term "saint" to describe Tarrant, Breivik, McVeigh, and Paddock as inspirational figures. The document made an accelerationist argument: "This system will eventually collapse... My actions and yours will accelerate this collapse and sooner or later the country, and then the world, will be covered in anarchy." The manifesto file-sharing also included [[James Mason]]'s *[[Siege]]*, Ted Kaczynski's manifesto, and [[Atomwaffen Division]] logos.
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The file-hosting also contained the "Haters Handbook," an [[Maniac Murder Cult|MKY]] propaganda document. Researchers, including in a GNET analysis titled "Dead Society" (August 2024), noted that Küçükyetim drew from multiple overlapping accelerationist networks, but the Terrorgram connection is the one confirmed through U.S. and Canadian criminal proceedings. He is not documented as a formal MKY member.
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[[Natalie Rupnow]], who carried out the [[2024 Abundant Life Christian School Shooting|Abundant Life Christian School shooting]] in [[Madison, Wisconsin]] in December 2024, had browsed Küçükyetim's Telegram chat before her attack.[^2]
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### Terrorgram Attribution and International Proceedings
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Küçükyetim posted a link to his livestream in a Terrorgram Collective group chat. In the Humber sentencing (December 19, 2025), DOJ prosecutors cited his attack among the attacks inspired or guided by Terrorgram's operational network under Humber's leadership. In Althorpe's agreed statement of facts, Canadian prosecutors confirmed that his publications had inspired "the stabbing of five people at a mosque in Turkey in 2024."
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The FBI arrests of Humber and Allison came on September 5, 2024, 24 days after the Eskisehir attack, as part of the same coordinated operation that had been building since Althorpe's December 2023 Canadian arrest. The Daily Sabah (Turkey) reported at the time of the U.S. arrests that the FBI was specifically connecting them to the Küçükyetim case.[^1]
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### Turkish Sentencing
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On September 24, 2025, Küçükyetim was sentenced to 75 years and 5 months in Turkish prison, comprising four 15-year sentences for attempted murder, one 11-year-and-8-month sentence, and 3 years and 9 months for creating public panic.[^3]
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### Footnotes
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[^1]: PPSC. "PPSC Sentencing Announcement, Matthew Althorpe." March 27, 2026. https://www.ppsc.gc.ca/eng/nws-nvs/2026/27_03_26.html; Daily Sabah. "US arrests white supremacists inspiring Turkish attacker." September 2024. https://www.dailysabah.com/politics/us-arrests-white-supremacists-inspiring-turkish-attacker/news
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[^2]: ADL. "Turkey Attacker Inspired by Accelerationism and Mass Killers, Manifesto Shows." https://www.adl.org/resources/article/turkey-attacker-inspired-accelerationism-and-mass-killers-manifesto-shows; GNET. "Dead Society: Tracing the Online Dimension of a Militant Accelerationist-Inspired Attack in Turkey." August 2024. https://gnet-research.org/2024/08/16/dead-society-tracing-the-online-dimension-of-a-militant-accelerationist-inspired-attack-in-turkey/
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[^3]: Hurriyet Daily News. "Court sentences young man to 75 years for stabbing spree." September 2025. https://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/court-sentences-young-man-to-75-years-for-stabbing-spree-213956
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10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/August Kreis III.md
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---
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category: "Extremism & Violent Networks"
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tags:
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- Person
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- AryanNations
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- NeoNazi
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- WhiteSupremacy
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- FBI
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- FBIInformant
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- USA
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- SouthCarolina
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summary: "August Kreis III was the director of a South Carolina Aryan Nations faction who made public overtures to al-Qaeda, an action reportedly instigated by FBI informant Joshua Caleb Sutter, before being convicted of VA benefits fraud in 2011."
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created: 2026-05-22
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updated: 2026-05-22
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born: 1952
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location: "Lexington, South Carolina"
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---
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August B. Kreis III was a white supremacist activist and self-appointed director of a [[Aryan Nations]] faction based in [[Lexington, South Carolina]] who served as a central node in the network that [[FBI]] informant [[Joshua Caleb Sutter]] was deployed to monitor and report on following Sutter's 2003 arrest and recruitment.
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### Background and Aryan Nations Leadership
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Kreis had a long history in the white supremacist movement before his South Carolina period. He served as "minister of information" for the main Aryan Nations under [[Richard Butler]] before Butler's death in 2004, and subsequently assumed leadership of a splinter faction that continued under the Aryan Nations name from [[Lexington County, South Carolina]]. In this role he operated out of the same geographic and social environment as Sutter.
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### The Al-Qaeda Statements and FBI Investigation
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In 2005, Kreis publicly stated to CNN that the Aryan Nations sought to form an alliance with [[al-Qaeda]] and claimed members of his movement "desired to join Al Qaeda in its jihad against the United States government."[^1] He had previously pledged allegiance to [[Osama bin Laden]].
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According to contemporaneous reporting citing FBI sources and former Aryan Nations figures, Sutter, already working as a paid FBI informant from his Lexington home, talked Kreis into making these public statements. Aryan Nations figures including Kreis himself and a figure named Redfeairn stated that Sutter had "attempted repeatedly to gain access to top leaders in various branches of the Aryan Nations and the Church of the Sons of Yaweh."[^2] The al-Qaeda public pledge brought FBI and media attention to Kreis and began the investigation that eventually led to his prosecution.
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In the same period, Sutter was appointed the "Minister for Islamic Liaison" of the Aryan Nations under Kreis, a position that nominally formalized the role he was performing as an FBI informant tracking Aryan Nations attempts to reach out to Islamist networks.[^2]
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### VA Fraud Prosecution and Sentence
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|
||||
The FBI investigation into Kreis's public statements did not produce a material support for terrorism prosecution. Instead, investigators discovered financial irregularities: Kreis had collected nearly $193,000 in military pension benefits to which he was not fully entitled, reporting no income from side sources to the [[Veterans Administration]] in 2005 while actually receiving approximately $33,669 from undisclosed sources.[^1]
|
||||
|
||||
In May 2011, a federal grand jury in [[U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina|U.S. District Court in Columbia, S.C.]], returned a three-count indictment against Kreis for filing fraudulent statements to obtain veterans benefits and embezzling money belonging to the United States. Kreis pleaded guilty in August 2011. In December 2011, he was sentenced to six months served, six months house arrest, two years probation, and ordered to repay approximately $193,000.[^3]
|
||||
|
||||
Kreis resigned leadership of his Aryan Nations faction following his conviction.
|
||||
|
||||
### Sutter's Earliest Federal Prosecution
|
||||
|
||||
Kreis represents the earliest documented instance of Sutter's FBI informant work producing a prosecutorial outcome. The Kreis case preceded Sutter's 2014 Martinet Press publishing operations and his 2017 entry into [[Atomwaffen Division]], situating Kreis as an early node in a continuous informant deployment that ran from 2003 through at least 2021. The [[FBI Columbia Field Office]], which handled Sutter's primary informant relationship through Special Agent [[Bill Moser]], was the same field office with jurisdiction over the Lexington County operations involving Kreis.
|
||||
|
||||
### Footnotes
|
||||
|
||||
[^1]: SPLC Hatewatch. "Neo-Nazi Leader Was Investigated for Supporting Al Qaeda." August 23, 2011. https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2011/08/23/neo-nazi-leader-was-investigated-supporting-al-qaeda
|
||||
|
||||
[^2]: Religion News Blog / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. "Federal investigators infiltrate extremist groups." February 2003. https://www.religionnewsblog.com/2476/federal-investigators-infiltrate-extremist-groups
|
||||
|
||||
[^3]: SPLC Hatewatch. "Neo-Nazi Leader August Kreis Sentenced for Fraud." December 14, 2011. https://www.splcenter.org/resources/hatewatch/neo-nazi-leader-august-kreis-sentenced-fraud/ Post and Courier (Columbia, SC). "Aryan Nations leader sentenced for fraud in SC." December 2011. https://www.postandcourier.com/aryan-nations-leader-sentenced-for-fraud-in-sc/article_e8988b73-93c5-50f9-afd5-ea3eb873c1b0.html
|
||||
160
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Baron Cain Martin.md
Normal file
160
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Baron Cain Martin.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,160 @@
|
|||
---
|
||||
category: "Extremism & Violent Networks"
|
||||
tags:
|
||||
- Person
|
||||
- NihilisticViolentExtremism
|
||||
- CSAM
|
||||
- DomesticTerrorism
|
||||
- FederalCase
|
||||
- Arizona
|
||||
- ViolentExtremism
|
||||
- MaterialSupport
|
||||
- TerrorismCharge
|
||||
created: 2026-05-21
|
||||
updated: 2026-05-22
|
||||
summary: "Baron Cain Martin, alias 'Convict,' is the first person in the United States charged under a federal terrorism statute as an alleged 764 Network member, with DOJ using 18 U.S.C. § 2339A anchored to an 18 U.S.C. § 956(a) conspiracy to kill or maim a victim located overseas."
|
||||
born: 2004
|
||||
location: "Tucson, Arizona"
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
[[Baron Cain Martin]], known online as "Convict," is a 21-year-old resident of [[Tucson, Arizona]] who was indicted by a federal grand jury in the [[U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona]] on 29 counts in October 2025, making him the first person in the United States to face a federal terrorism charge as an alleged member of the [[764 Network|764]] network. Martin has been in federal custody since his arrest on December 11, 2024, and the indictment was unsealed on October 31, 2025.[^1]
|
||||
|
||||
### Background and Role in 764
|
||||
|
||||
According to prosecutors, Martin joined 764 in approximately 2019, when he was around 14 or 15 years old, and over the following years rose to a position of leadership and administration within the network's chatrooms. By the time of his arrest he was operating as an administrator of 764 spaces and had authored a detailed grooming guide that he posted online, advising other 764 members on how to identify, groom, and extort vulnerable juveniles. The guide specifically recommended targeting victims who were already struggling with mental health issues, on the ground that psychological vulnerability made targets easier to coerce.[^1]
|
||||
|
||||
Martin operated across [[Discord]], [[Telegram]], and other platforms under the "Convict" alias and additional handles. Named co-conspirators in the indictment include [[Leonidas Varagiannis]], [[Prasan Nepal]], and [[Tony Christopher Long]], all separately prosecuted in federal cases arising from the same investigative period.
|
||||
|
||||
### Case Record
|
||||
|
||||
The case is docketed as [[United States v. Martin (4-25-cr-00190)|United States v. Martin]], 4:25-cr-00190-TUC-AMM(BGM), before [[Angela M. Martinez|U.S. District Judge Angela M. Martinez]], with [[Bruce G. Macdonald]] serving as the assigned magistrate.[^2] The original arrest charges were filed under magistrate case 4:24-mj-11950 following Martin's arrest on December 11, 2024. A superseding grand jury indictment on 29 counts was returned and unsealed on October 31, 2025; Martin was arraigned on the superseding indictment on November 21, 2025 and entered a not-guilty plea on all counts.
|
||||
|
||||
The case was designated complex by the court. An original trial date of March 24, 2026 was vacated; a status conference before Magistrate Macdonald was scheduled for May 19, 2026. The current jury trial date is June 30, 2026, with a plea deadline of June 19, 2026.[^3]
|
||||
|
||||
The prosecution is led by [[Justin Sher]], Trial Attorney in the [[U.S. Department of Justice]] National Security Division's [[Counterterrorism Section]], and [[James Donnelly]], who serves as DOJ's designated domestic terrorism coordinator for [[Nihilistic Violent Extremism]] cases. The indictment was filed by [[Timothy Courchaine]], U.S. Attorney for the [[District of Arizona]], who was appointed to that position by [[Attorney General]] [[Pamela Bondi]] on February 28, 2025.[^1]
|
||||
|
||||
### Charges
|
||||
|
||||
The 29-count superseding indictment charges Martin with:
|
||||
|
||||
- Participating in a child exploitation enterprise
|
||||
- Conspiring to provide material support to terrorists ([[18 U.S.C. § 2339A]])
|
||||
- Conspiring to kill, kidnap, or maim persons in a foreign country ([[18 U.S.C. § 956|18 U.S.C. § 956(a)]])
|
||||
- Producing child sexual abuse material (CSAM), five counts
|
||||
- Distributing CSAM, eleven counts
|
||||
- Coercing and enticing minors to engage in sexual activity, three counts
|
||||
- Cyberstalking, three counts
|
||||
- Animal crushing and distribution of animal crush videos
|
||||
- Conspiracy to commit wire fraud
|
||||
|
||||
The material support to terrorism charge rests in part on a September 2022 alleged conspiracy in which Martin directed a victim living outside the United States to self-harm, self-maim, and self-kill. Prosecutors applied the terrorism statute because this coercive violence was intended to further the goals of 764 as a nihilistic violent extremist network.[^1]
|
||||
|
||||
### Victims
|
||||
|
||||
The superseding indictment alleges that Martin victimized at least nine individuals. Eight of the nine victims were minors at the time the offenses were committed, ranging in age from 11 to 15 years old. The indictment does not name the victims publicly.
|
||||
|
||||
### First Federal Terrorism Designation
|
||||
|
||||
The designation of the material support to terrorism count against Martin represents the first time in the United States that a 764 network member has been charged with a federal terrorism offense. The case was cited by [[Pamela Bondi|Attorney General Pamela Bondi]] and [[Kash Patel|FBI Director Kash Patel]] at the time of its announcement as evidence of the government's willingness to apply terrorism statutes to what had previously been charged primarily as child exploitation crimes.[^1]
|
||||
|
||||
DOJ Trial Attorney [[Justin Sher]] (National Security Division) and DOJ career officials subsequently offered public assessments of 764 as a terrorism threat equal in seriousness to foreign-directed networks. The Martin case is the legal vehicle through which the DOJ is testing the proposition that 764's violence is terrorism rather than merely criminal exploitation.[^4]
|
||||
|
||||
### The Terrorism Charge: Statutory Theory
|
||||
|
||||
The terrorism count in the indictment is a conspiracy charge under [[18 U.S.C. § 2339A]]: conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists. This is not a charge under 18 U.S.C. § 2339B (providing material support to a designated [[Foreign Terrorist Organization]]). The distinction is legally critical: 764 is not a State Department-designated FTO, so 2339B was unavailable.
|
||||
|
||||
Section 2339A instead requires only that the defendant knowingly provide material support, defined broadly to include property, services, expert advice or assistance, personnel (including oneself), and training, knowing or intending that the support will be used in preparation for, or to carry out, a listed predicate offense. The predicate offense named in the Martin indictment is a violation of [[18 U.S.C. § 956|18 U.S.C. § 956(a)]]: conspiracy to kill, kidnap, maim, or injure persons in a foreign country, requiring an overt act within U.S. jurisdiction.[^5]
|
||||
|
||||
The statutory mechanics: DOJ charged Martin with conspiring to provide material support (under 2339A) in furtherance of a conspiracy to kill or maim an overseas victim (under 956(a)). The two conspiracy layers do not create an impermissible "conspiracy to conspire" problem because 2339A contains its own conspiracy provision, meaning no separate overt act is required once the agreement is formed.[^6]
|
||||
|
||||
The penalty for the 2339A conspiracy count is up to 15 years per count. The 956(a) conspiracy to kill, if it results in death, carries life imprisonment; conspiracy to maim carries up to 35 years.
|
||||
|
||||
### Specific Facts Underlying the Terrorism Count
|
||||
|
||||
The terrorism count rests on a September 2022 conspiracy in which Martin and unnamed co-conspirators directed a victim identified only as "Victim 7," located outside the United States, to self-harm, self-maim, and die by suicide. The government's theory is that coercing an overseas victim to commit violence against themselves constitutes a conspiracy to kill or maim a person in a foreign country under 956(a), and that Martin's actions in furtherance of that conspiracy, specifically his authorship and circulation of the "[[Grooming/Manipulation Egirls Guide]]" and his operational direction of 764 members, constituted "expert advice or assistance" and "services" and "personnel" within the meaning of 2339A.[^5]
|
||||
|
||||
According to analysis published by researchers at the [[GWU Program on Extremism]], the government will likely rely on overlapping evidence to prove both the 956(a) conspiracy and the 2339A conspiracy, since the same conduct (coercing Victim 7) forms the core of both counts.[^6]
|
||||
|
||||
U.S. Attorney Courchaine described the ideological component at a press conference: the conduct was not motivated by financial gain but by "the glory and for the ideology of bringing down just generally the system," and that ideological motive, 764's stated accelerationist goal of destabilizing U.S. society and the world order, is what supports the terrorism framing under the statute. He stated: "It's terrorism because it was an ideology that specifically motivated violent actions."[^7]
|
||||
|
||||
### The Grooming Guide as Material Support
|
||||
|
||||
The indictment identifies Martin as the author and distributor of the "Grooming/Manipulation Egirls Guide," which provided detailed instructions to 764 members on how to identify, target, and coerce vulnerable minors into producing CSAM and self-harm content. The government classifies the guide's authorship and distribution as both a "service" to 764 members and "expert advice or assistance" within the statutory definition of material support under 2339A. This theory, that a written manual of criminal tradecraft constitutes "expert advice or assistance" under the terrorism material support statute, is a significant extension of how 2339A has traditionally been applied and could face First Amendment challenge if Martin moves to dismiss.[^6]
|
||||
|
||||
### Why Martin and Not Earlier 764 Defendants
|
||||
|
||||
The 2339A/956 theory was not applied in earlier 764 prosecutions for a structural reason. The 956(a) predicate requires a conspiracy to kill or maim a person located in a foreign country. Earlier cases, including the founding prosecution of [[Bradley Chance Cadenhead]] (Texas state court, CSAM charges only), and the federal prosecutions of [[Leonidas Varagiannis]] and [[Prasan Nepal]] (D.D.C., case 1:25-cr-00304, child exploitation enterprise and related charges but no terrorism count), either did not involve an identified overseas victim of directed lethal violence, or prosecutors chose not to deploy the terrorism theory at that stage.[^8]
|
||||
|
||||
The Martin indictment is the first case where DOJ identified a specific overseas victim who was directed to commit lethal self-harm, providing the 956(a) predicate anchor that makes 2339A available without any FTO designation. The Baumgartner/Jonas analysis frames this as DOJ using 2339A as "connective tissue linking online radicalization to real-world harm" and as a signal that the government now views NVE networks as terrorist enterprises rather than merely criminal exploitation schemes.[^6]
|
||||
|
||||
An additional factor is the explicit accelerationist ideology element. The Chavez prosecution (San Antonio, RICO guilty plea December 2025) and the Varagiannis/Nepal prosecution both used NVE framing in press releases but charged under RICO and child exploitation statutes. Martin's case is distinguished by the combination of: (1) a specifically identified overseas victim, (2) documented ideological goal statements from Martin himself about societal destabilization, and (3) the existence of the grooming guide as a distributable "expert advice" artifact.
|
||||
|
||||
### Murder-for-Hire Allegation
|
||||
|
||||
The indictment also contains a discrete episode from 2022 in which, after becoming involved in a dispute with a 13-year-old girl, Martin allegedly offered to pay $3,000 to have the girl's grandmother killed. He allegedly provided the grandmother's home address and shared both the girl's and her grandmother's phone numbers in a separate Discord chat alongside a solicitation for someone to carry out the attack. This episode is cited in the conspiracy to kill, kidnap or maim persons in a foreign country count and by U.S. Attorney Courchaine as additional support for the terrorism framing, a murder-for-hire offer directed at a family member of a coercion victim, undertaken as network discipline.[^7]
|
||||
|
||||
### Potential Sentence
|
||||
|
||||
If convicted, Martin faces a maximum penalty of life in prison on each count of participating in a child exploitation enterprise, conspiracy to kill or maim in a foreign country, and coercion and enticement of a child. He faces 30 years per count for production of CSAM, 15 years for providing material support to terrorists, up to 20 years for cyberstalking resulting in permanent disfigurement or bodily injury, and additional penalties for the remaining counts.[^1]
|
||||
|
||||
### FBI Classification and Congressional Oversight
|
||||
|
||||
The FBI's internal classification of 764 as a "Tier One" investigative matter, the highest threat category, preceded the Martin terrorism charge and provided the institutional framework within which DOJ National Security Division attorneys were able to bring a terrorism count. FBI Director [[Kash Patel]] testified to Congress in September 2025 that 764 represents "the new form of what I refer to as modern-day terrorism in America."[^9]
|
||||
|
||||
On February 17, 2026, House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Chairman [[James Comer]] and Subcommittee on Federal Law Enforcement Chairman [[Clay Higgins]] sent a formal letter to Patel requesting a classified staff briefing on the FBI's 764 investigations and apprehensions, noting that the Bureau had more than 250 open 764 investigations.[^10]
|
||||
|
||||
[[Steve Grocki]], Chief of DOJ's [[Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section]], acknowledged the charging challenge in a December 2025 public panel hosted by the GWU Program on Extremism: "Coercing a minor to engage in self-harm or to harm another is not necessarily criminalized in an easy way." The Martin 2339A theory represents DOJ's resolution of that charging gap, sidestepping the absence of a specific federal statute criminalizing directed self-harm by instead treating the coercive campaign as a terrorism conspiracy.[^4]
|
||||
|
||||
At the same panel, Sher described 764's stated objective as "to cause the downfall of society, cause the downfall of the U.S. government," and Donnelly called the threat "as serious a threat as you can imagine."[^4]
|
||||
|
||||
### Pre-Trial Record
|
||||
|
||||
As of May 2026, no defense motions challenging the terrorism count have been reported in public sources or accessible docket summaries. The case was designated complex, which typically signals that both parties anticipate substantial pre-trial litigation. Any motion to dismiss or constitutional challenge to the terrorism charge would likely target either (a) the First Amendment implications of treating the grooming guide as "expert advice or assistance" under 2339A, or (b) whether directing a victim to harm herself satisfies the "kill, kidnap, or maim" element of 956(a) when the perpetrator is directing self-inflicted harm rather than acting directly. The PACER docket (4:25-cr-00190) should be checked closer to the June 30, 2026 trial date for any newly filed motions.[^3]
|
||||
|
||||
Martin has been held in federal pretrial detention since his initial arrest on December 11, 2024.
|
||||
|
||||
### International Parallel Proceedings
|
||||
|
||||
The Martin prosecution is occurring alongside a wave of international cases against 764 and Com network members in which the question of terrorism prosecution is being actively contested in multiple jurisdictions.
|
||||
|
||||
In the [[Netherlands]], the founder of [[No Lives Matter]], identified only as Justin B., 25, of [[Eindhoven]], faces charges under Article 140a of the Dutch Criminal Code, membership in a terrorist organization, as well as CSAM, animal crushing, and distribution of violent content charges. The Dutch [[Openbaar Ministerie]] (OM) formally classified No Lives Matter as a terrorist organization, making this the first known terrorism prosecution of a Com network member in the EU. Justin B. was held in the high-security terrorist wing of [[Vught Prison]] and appeared in the high-security courtroom in [[Rotterdam]] in October 2025 at his first public hearing.[^11]
|
||||
|
||||
In [[Germany]], [[Shahriar J.]], a 21-year-old dual German-Iranian national known by the alias "White Tiger," faces 204 criminal charges in [[Hamburg]] state court, including one count of murder and five counts of attempted murder as an indirect perpetrator. Shahriar J. was arrested on June 17, 2025 following an FBI tip on child pornography; police found 85,000 files and more than 600 videos. Prosecutors allege he drove a 13-year-old American boy to suicide in January 2022 via livestream by using a Finnish minor as an intermediary. Trial began in Hamburg on January 9, 2026 with 82 days of hearings scheduled through December 17. Germany is prosecuting under murder and CSAM statutes, not terrorism statutes, making the Hamburg case a direct contrast to the U.S. 2339A approach.[^12]
|
||||
|
||||
In [[Canada]], the government listed 764 as a terrorist entity under the Criminal Code on December 10, 2025, becoming the first country to formally designate the network. The listing criminalizes participation in and support for 764, and freezes all Canadian-held 764 property. Canada had already conducted multiple terrorism prosecutions of Com/764-adjacent individuals: the [[RCMP]] arrested an Edmonton-area 15-year-old in May 2025 and again in October 2025 for terrorism offenses linked to the Com/764 network, charging the youth with participation in a terrorist group, facilitating terrorist activity, willful promotion of hatred, uttering threats, and CSAM possession.[^13]
|
||||
|
||||
### Analytical Significance
|
||||
|
||||
The 2339A/956 theory, as deployed in the Martin case, resolves what had been the central obstacle to terrorism prosecution of domestic online networks that are not designated FTOs: it requires only an overseas victim, a knowing conspiracy to cause lethal or serious physical harm to that victim, and defendant conduct classifiable as material support. No State Department designation, no ideological alignment with a recognized foreign movement, and no connection to a foreign government or organization is required. The theory travels wherever 764 goes, which is transnational by design.
|
||||
|
||||
[[Tanya Mehra]] and [[Menso Hartgers]] of the [[International Centre for Counter-Terrorism]] (ICCT), in their October 2025 policy brief "Fury and Void: Legal Pathways to Counter 764," noted the challenge of applying traditional terrorism legal frameworks to 764 given the network's stated nihilism rather than a coherent political ideology, arguing that nihilism as such may not satisfy some national terrorism threshold definitions. The U.S. government's approach sidesteps this problem entirely: by anchoring the 2339A charge to 956(a)'s foreign-country violence predicate, DOJ avoids having to prove ideological terrorism intent under any federal domestic terrorism definition. The act of conspiring to cause lethal harm to an overseas victim is sufficient, regardless of ideology.[^14]
|
||||
|
||||
### Footnotes
|
||||
|
||||
[^1]: U.S. Department of Justice, OPA. "Arizona Leader of Violent Extremist Network '764' Charged with Running a Child Exploitation Enterprise, Supporting Terrorists, Producing and Distributing Child Pornography, and Other Crimes." Press Release, October 31, 2025. https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/arizona-leader-violent-extremist-network-764-charged-running-child-exploitation-enterprise; CyberScoop. "Alleged 764 leader arrested in Arizona, faces life in prison." https://cyberscoop.com/baron-cain-martin-764-leader-arrested-charged/
|
||||
|
||||
[^2]: CourtListener, United States v. Martin, 4:25-cr-00190-TUC-AMM(BGM), D. Ariz. https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/69535068/united-states-v-martin/
|
||||
|
||||
[^3]: PacerMonitor, USA v. Martin, 4:25-cr-00190, Arizona District Court. https://www.pacermonitor.com/public/case/56789960/USA_v_Martin
|
||||
|
||||
[^4]: ABC News. "In rare public comments, career DOJ officials offer chilling warnings about online network 764." 2026. https://abcnews.com/US/rare-public-comments-career-doj-officials-offer-chilling/story?id=128526657; GWU Program on Extremism. "Holding 764 Accountable." Panel, December 18, 2025. https://extremism.gwu.edu/holding-764-accountable
|
||||
|
||||
[^5]: 18 U.S.C. § 2339A (material support to terrorists); 18 U.S.C. § 956(a) (conspiracy to kill, kidnap, maim, or injure persons in a foreign country). Cornell LII: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2339A; https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/956
|
||||
|
||||
[^6]: Baumgartner, Luke, and Barry Jonas. "How the DOJ is Prosecuting Nihilistic Violent Extremism as Domestic Terrorism." *Just Security,* December 9, 2025. https://www.justsecurity.org/126226/prosecuting-nihilistic-violent-extremism-domestic-terrorism/
|
||||
|
||||
[^7]: AZFamily. "Tucson case first in nation to pursue federal terrorism charges against member of 764." April 3, 2026. https://www.azfamily.com/2026/04/03/tucson-case-first-nation-pursue-federal-terrorism-charges-against-member-764/
|
||||
|
||||
[^8]: U.S. Department of Justice, USAO-DC. "Leaders of 764 Arrested and Charged for Operating Global Child Exploitation Enterprise." April 30, 2025. https://www.justice.gov/usao-dc/pr/leaders-764-arrested-and-charged-operating-global-child-exploitation-enterprise
|
||||
|
||||
[^9]: Patel, Kash. Opening Statement, Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Federal Bureau of Investigation Oversight Hearing, September 16, 2025. https://www.fbi.gov/news/speeches-and-testimony/director-patel-opening-statement-to-the-senate-committee-on-the-judiciary-091625
|
||||
|
||||
[^10]: U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. Letter to FBI Director Kash Patel re: 764 Network, February 17, 2026. https://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Letter-to-FBI-764-Group-.pdf
|
||||
|
||||
[^11]: NL Times. "Eindhoven suspect says he left sadistic online 'Com' shortly before his arrest." October 28, 2025. https://nltimes.nl/2025/10/28/eindhoven-suspect-says-left-sadistic-online-com-shortly-arrest
|
||||
|
||||
[^12]: Euronews. "German court begins trial of 'White Tiger' online predator." January 9, 2026. https://www.euronews.com/2026/01/09/german-court-begins-trial-of-white-tiger-online-predator; CBS News. "Man dubbed 'White Tiger' charged with murder over U.S. teen's livestreamed suicide." https://www.cbsnews.com/news/man-charged-murder-germany-us-teen-suicide-764-network/
|
||||
|
||||
[^13]: Government of Canada. "Government of Canada lists four new terrorist entities." December 10, 2025. https://www.canada.ca/en/public-safety-canada/news/2025/12/government-of-canada-lists-four-new-terrorist-entities0.html; RCMP. "Alberta youth arrested for terrorism and child pornography offences." October 2, 2025. https://rcmp.ca/en/news/2025/10/alberta-youth-arrested-terrorism-and-child-pornography-offences
|
||||
|
||||
[^14]: Mehra, Tanya, and Menso Hartgers. "Fury and Void: Legal Pathways to Counter 764." International Centre for Counter-Terrorism (ICCT), October 2025. https://icct.nl/publication/fury-and-void-legal-pathways-counter-764
|
||||
40
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Ben John.md
Normal file
40
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Ben John.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,40 @@
|
|||
---
|
||||
category: "Extremism & Violent Networks"
|
||||
tags:
|
||||
- Person
|
||||
- NeoNazi
|
||||
- O9A
|
||||
- UK
|
||||
- TerroristConviction
|
||||
- ViolentExtremism
|
||||
- Accelerationism
|
||||
- Lincolnshire
|
||||
location: "Lincoln, Lincolnshire, England"
|
||||
created: 2026-05-22
|
||||
updated: 2026-05-22
|
||||
summary: "Ben John was a 21-year-old Lincoln criminology student convicted in August 2021 of one terrorism possession offence and given a suspended sentence later overturned on Solicitor General reference, with O9A literature among material found in his possession."
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
Ben John, 21, of Lincoln, was a criminology student at [[De Montfort University]] Leicester when he was arrested following an 11-month investigation by [[Counter Terrorism Policing]]'s East Midlands unit. Officers found a hard drive at his home in Saxby Street, Highfields, Leicester, containing the Anarchy Cookbook Version 2000, an array of white supremacist and antisemitic literature, and material relating to the [[Order of Nine Angles]] (O9A). He was convicted at Leicester Crown Court on 12 August 2021 of one count of possessing a document useful to a terrorist under section 58 of the [[Terrorism Act 2000]].[^1]
|
||||
|
||||
### Initial Sentencing
|
||||
|
||||
Judge [[Timothy Spencer QC]] sentenced John on 31 August 2021 to two years' imprisonment suspended for two years. In unusually personal sentencing remarks, Spencer asked John whether he had ever read the works of Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, or William Shakespeare, and directed him to read classic literature as part of what he framed as an effort to broaden the defendant's perspective. Spencer's direction and the suspended sentence attracted immediate and widespread press criticism, with multiple counter-extremism commentators arguing that the sentence was inadequate for a conviction carrying a 10-year maximum.[^2]
|
||||
|
||||
### Solicitor General Reference and Court of Appeal
|
||||
|
||||
[[Solicitor General]] [[Alex Chalk QC MP]] (who later served as Attorney General and as Lord Chancellor under Rishi Sunak) personally presented a reference under section 36 of the [[Criminal Justice Act 1988]] to the Court of Appeal, arguing that John's suspended sentence was unduly lenient. The Court of Appeal upheld the reference. On 19 January 2022, the court increased John's sentence to two years' immediate imprisonment plus one year on licence. John was required to surrender himself to police custody and was taken to Lincoln city centre police station by 4pm that day.[^3]
|
||||
|
||||
The case citation for the Court of Appeal judgment is reported as [2022] EWCA Crim 54.
|
||||
|
||||
### O9A Materials
|
||||
|
||||
Officers found that John possessed O9A material alongside white supremacist and antisemitic literature. Lincolnshire Police's statement after his conviction specified that the material included content related to O9A as a Satanist organisation. The charge was on the possession count alone, not for O9A membership or dissemination; the O9A material was part of the broader evidence establishing John's extremist orientation rather than forming a discrete element of the charge.[^1]
|
||||
|
||||
### Footnotes
|
||||
|
||||
[^1]: Greatest Hits Radio (Lincolnshire). "Lincoln 'white supremacist' convicted of terrorism offence." August 2021. https://planetradio.co.uk/lincs-fm/local/news/lincoln-white-supremacist-convicted-of-terrorism-offence/; Special Branch inquiry via Far-Right Criminals. https://far-rightcriminals.com/2021/08/13/special-branch-inquiry-led-to-students-terror-related-arrest/
|
||||
|
||||
[^2]: ITV News Central. "White supremacist Ben John told to read books by Judge who spared him jail imprisoned upon appeal." January 19, 2022. https://www.itv.com/news/central/2022-01-19/white-supremacist-ben-john-told-to-read-books-by-judge-who-spared-him-jail-imprisoned-upon-appeal; Law Gazette. "Extremist told to read classic literature jailed by Court of Appeal." January 2022. https://www.lawgazette.co.uk/news/extremist-told-to-read-classic-literature-jailed-by-court-of-appeal/5111203.article
|
||||
|
||||
[^3]: GOV.UK. "Ben John's sentence increased following personal intervention by the Solicitor General." January 2022. https://www.gov.uk/government/news/ben-johns-sentence-increased-following-personal-intervention-by-the-solicitor-general--3; Court of Appeal (Criminal Division), R v John [2022] EWCA Crim 54 (19 January 2022).
|
||||
155
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Benjamin Hannam.md
Normal file
155
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Benjamin Hannam.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,155 @@
|
|||
---
|
||||
category: "Extremism & Violent Networks"
|
||||
tags:
|
||||
- Person
|
||||
- NeoNazi
|
||||
- NationalAction
|
||||
- MetropolitanPolice
|
||||
- UK
|
||||
- TerroristOrganization
|
||||
- IronMarch
|
||||
- Proscribed
|
||||
- VettingFailure
|
||||
- LawEnforcementEntryism
|
||||
created: 2026-05-22
|
||||
updated: 2026-05-22
|
||||
summary: "Benjamin Hannam was a probationary Metropolitan Police constable convicted on 1 April 2021 at the Old Bailey of National Action membership, fraud by false representation on his police vetting forms, and possession of terrorist documents, becoming the first serving UK police officer convicted of a terrorism-related offence, with his identification tracing directly to the 2019 Iron March database leak."
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
Benjamin Hannam was a probationary constable with the [[Metropolitan Police Service]] who became the first serving British police officer convicted of a terrorism-related offence. He was convicted on 1 April 2021 at the [[Central Criminal Court]] (Old Bailey) of membership of the proscribed organisation [[National Action]], two counts of fraud by false representation for lying on his police application and vetting forms, two counts of possession of documents useful to a terrorist under section 58 of the [[Terrorism Act 2000]], and one count of possessing a prohibited image of a child. He was sentenced on 4 May 2021 by Judge [[Anthony Leonard QC]] to four years and four months in prison plus one year on extended licence.[^1]
|
||||
|
||||
### Recruitment into National Action
|
||||
|
||||
Hannam, of Edmonton, north London, attended his first National Action meeting on 6 March 2016 at a pub in Paddington, London, joining the organisation's London branch.[^2] He was 17 at the time. He continued to attend National Action activities and events through the summer of 2017, meaning his membership spanned both the organisation's legal period and the period following its proscription on 16 December 2016 under the [[Terrorism Act 2000]] (Proscribed Organisations) (Amendment) (No. 2) Order 2016, when [[Amber Rudd]] described it as "a racist, antisemitic and homophobic organisation which stirs up hatred, glorifies violence and promotes a vile ideology."[^3]
|
||||
|
||||
Evidence confirmed that Hannam attended a National Action meeting in a pub in [[Swindon]] in January 2017, after the proscription had taken effect. The prosecution used CCTV footage, travel records, and financial transactions to place him at this gathering. Others in attendance included individuals who were later convicted of National Action membership and terrorism-related offences in subsequent prosecutions.[^4]
|
||||
|
||||
The prosecution characterised Hannam as an "active recruiter" for National Action's London branch during his period of membership.[^5]
|
||||
|
||||
### Iron March and the "Anglisc" Account
|
||||
|
||||
Hannam registered on the [[Iron March]] neo-fascist web forum under the username "Anglisc" shortly after joining National Action's London branch in March 2016. His Iron March posts from 2016 to 2017 included a thread he started titled "Muslim shoots white man in London," in which he asked other users for "thoughts and advice." In Iron March private messages, Hannam described himself as a fascist and disclosed his National Action membership.[^6]
|
||||
|
||||
The Iron March forum closed in November 2017. In November 2019, an anonymous individual calling themselves "antifa-data" uploaded the complete Iron March SQL database to the [[Internet Archive]], exposing 1,207 user accounts including registration email addresses, IP addresses, and all public and private message content. [[Counter Terrorism Command]] detectives investigating Iron March-linked individuals in the United Kingdom identified the "Anglisc" account and linked it to Hannam's address in February 2020.[^7] He was arrested at his home in north London on 5 March 2020.
|
||||
|
||||
The Iron March database was thus the proximate mechanism by which a serving police officer's pre-employment extremism was discovered, two years after he had joined the force.
|
||||
|
||||
### Vetting Application and Fraud
|
||||
|
||||
Hannam applied to join the Metropolitan Police Service on 19 July 2017, at a time when he had been a National Action member for approximately 17 months and a member of the organisation after its proscription for seven months. He submitted both an initial application form and a subsequent vetting form, on both of which he was asked whether he had been a member of the [[British National Party]] "or similar organisation." On both occasions he answered in the negative.[^8]
|
||||
|
||||
His school, which had raised concerns internally about comments Hannam had made about immigration during a Brexit debate, was not contacted during the vetting process. The Metropolitan Police later confirmed that "no school reference was sought" during Hannam's 2017 vetting.[^9]
|
||||
|
||||
Hannam joined the Metropolitan Police in or around early 2018 and worked as a probationary constable for nearly two years before his arrest in March 2020. He was 21 at the time of arrest and 22 at the time of conviction.
|
||||
|
||||
The fraud charges, brought under sections 1 and 2 of the [[Fraud Act 2006]], covered both the initial police application and the vetting form. The sentencing remarks by Anthony Leonard QC are published on the Courts and Tribunals Judiciary website.[^10]
|
||||
|
||||
### Evidence Seized
|
||||
|
||||
When Counter Terrorism Command officers searched Hannam's home following his arrest, they found Nazi-style posters, handwritten notes detailing his National Action membership, badges and business cards associated with the organisation, and a USB memory stick containing two documents charged under section 58 of the Terrorism Act 2000 as information useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism.[^11]
|
||||
|
||||
The first document was [[Anders Breivik]]'s manifesto, which contained detailed guidance on the manufacture of radiological, chemical, and biological weapons and improvised explosive devices. Breivik killed 77 people in coordinated attacks in [[Norway]] on 22 July 2011. The second document was an instructional manual on how to use a knife to carry out a fatal attack.
|
||||
|
||||
Additionally, a prohibited image of a child was found in Hannam's possession. He pleaded guilty to this count separately under section 62 of the [[Coroners and Justice Act 2009]], and a reporting restriction on the case was lifted by Judge Leonard after Hannam entered this plea, enabling full press reporting of all charges.[^12]
|
||||
|
||||
No O9A-specific materials were identified in published case documentation as forming part of the section 58 charges, though O9A symbols were noted among materials found in National Action-associated searches conducted during the broader National Action prosecution wave. Hannam's involvement with National Action post-dated the period in which [[Ryan Fleming]], the O9A-affiliated Yorkshire National Action organiser, was most directly active in pushing O9A ideology into the organisation's internal culture.
|
||||
|
||||
### Sentence and Post-Conviction Orders
|
||||
|
||||
Judge Anthony Leonard QC sentenced Hannam at the Central Criminal Court on 4 May 2021. The sentencing remarks place the offending in Category B culpability on the National Action membership count, characterised as toward the lower end of the scale in terms of terrorist connections and motivations.[^10] The total sentence was four years and four months, concurrent across the multiple counts, plus one year on extended licence.
|
||||
|
||||
In addition to the custodial sentence:
|
||||
|
||||
The [[Crown Prosecution Service]] applied for and was granted a [[Serious Crime Prevention Order]] for a period of two years following Hannam's release, with conditions restricting his internet use to protect the public.
|
||||
|
||||
A 10-year notification period was imposed under terrorism notification provisions, which requires Hannam to notify police of specified personal information for a decade following his release.
|
||||
|
||||
Hannam was already no longer serving by the time of sentencing, having been suspended following his arrest. An accelerated gross misconduct hearing was conducted in April 2021, concurrent with the criminal proceedings. The tribunal found the allegation of discreditable conduct proven as gross misconduct and dismissed Hannam without notice.[^13]
|
||||
|
||||
### National Action Prosecution Waves
|
||||
|
||||
Hannam's case fell within the fourth documented wave of National Action prosecutions. The prior three waves produced convictions at the [[Old Bailey]] in July 2018 (Wave 1: [[Christopher Lythgoe]], [[Matthew Hankinson]]), at [[Birmingham Crown Court]] in December 2018 (Wave 2: [[Adam Thomas]], [[Claudia Patatas]], [[Daniel Bogunovic]], [[Darren Fletcher]], [[Nathan Pryke]], [[Joel Wilmore]]), and at Birmingham Crown Court in June 2020 (Wave 3: [[Alice Cutter]], [[Mark Jones]], [[Garry Jack]], [[Connor Scothern]]). A fifth wave at [[Winchester Crown Court]] in May 2022 convicted National Action co-founder [[Alex Davies]] on membership charges. The full prosecution history is documented in the [[National Action]] vault entry.[^14]
|
||||
|
||||
Hannam's case introduced a distinct charge type not present in the earlier waves: the fraud by false representation counts arising from his police application and vetting forms. These counts make the case structurally significant as a documented instance of a proscribed terrorist organisation's member successfully passing into a law enforcement institution through deliberate deception of the vetting process.
|
||||
|
||||
### The Iron March Identification Mechanism
|
||||
|
||||
The mechanism by which Hannam's pre-employment extremism was discovered illustrates the specific institutional risk posed by the Iron March leak. Standard police vetting in 2017 had no access to the Iron March database, which did not become publicly available until November 2019. The forum's closure in November 2017 came approximately four months after Hannam submitted his police application, and approximately five months before he is presumed to have begun probationary service.
|
||||
|
||||
The Counter Terrorism Command investigation that identified Hannam began in February 2020, approximately 27 months after the forum's closure and 15 months after the database leak. This timeline demonstrates that a serving officer with known prior extremist forum activity remained undetected for the entire duration of his probationary period, with identification occurring only through a retrospective external data source.[^7]
|
||||
|
||||
[[Bellingcat]], which published its Iron March database access guide on 6 November 2019 (the same day as the leak), noted in its reporting that the database mapped U.K.-based Iron March users across multiple cities and that the dataset was being used by researchers and journalists to identify individuals whose extremist activities had been pseudonymous.
|
||||
|
||||
### Vetting System Failures
|
||||
|
||||
The specific vetting failure in Hannam's case rested on the absence of a school reference check. His school had raised concerns about his views internally during a Brexit debate, but because no reference was sought from the school, this information was never available to the vetting unit. The Metropolitan Police's internal standard for vetting of candidates for the officer role required referee checks, but school references were not routinely mandated.[^9]
|
||||
|
||||
The broader systemic context was later documented in the [[HMICFRS]] thematic inspection commissioned on 18 October 2021 by then-Home Secretary [[Priti Patel]] in the wake of the murder of [[Sarah Everard]] by serving Metropolitan Police officer [[Wayne Couzens]]. The HMICFRS inspection, conducted between November 2021 and May 2022 across eight forces, examined 725 vetting files of candidates who had received clearance and found 131 where the clearance decision was "questionable at best." Among those 131 cases were officers with criminal records, with substantial undischarged debt, with family members linked to organised crime, or who had provided false information to the vetting unit.[^15]
|
||||
|
||||
The Metropolitan Police's subsequent internal review, [[Operation Jorica]], published in January 2026, examined vetting and hiring practices over the 10 years prior to April 2023 and found that of 5,073 recruits examined, nearly 90 per cent were not subjected to special branch counter-terrorism screening. The review attributed this gap to the pace and scale of recruitment under the national [[Police Uplift Programme]], which ran from July 2019 and targeted the addition of 20,000 officers across England and Wales by March 2023, with the Metropolitan Police assigned a target of 4,557 additional officers.[^16]
|
||||
|
||||
### Parliamentary Accountability
|
||||
|
||||
The Hannam case generated immediate accountability pressure on the Metropolitan Police from the [[London Assembly]]. Following the conviction in April 2021, Assembly members posed formal written questions to the Mayor of London under the heading "Met Police Officers and Banned Far-Right Groups," seeking assurance that no other serving officers or staff were members of proscribed organisations. The Metropolitan Police's response to these questions is documented in the London Assembly question-and-answer records.[^17]
|
||||
|
||||
No dedicated parliamentary debate focused specifically on the Hannam case was located in Hansard for the period April to December 2021. The case was, however, contextually present in the broader Hansard record of the period through the HMICFRS vetting inquiry commission (October 2021) and the Topical Questions session of 22 November 2021, in which vetting failures and the standards of behaviour necessary to maintain public trust in policing were debated in the aftermath of the Couzens murder. The Home Secretary's commissioning of the HMICFRS inspection cited both the Couzens case and the broader pattern of misconduct as the basis for the review.[^15]
|
||||
|
||||
The O9A proscription debate conducted in the House of Commons on 13 July 2021 (HC Deb), documented in the [[Order of Nine Angles]] vault entry, addressed the broader pattern of O9A-linked convictions and the government's refusal to explain its non-decision on proscription. The Hannam case was subsumed within this debate as one of the eight O9A-connected convictions between April 2019 and April 2021 cited by [[HOPE not hate]] and referenced by [[Stephanie Peacock MP]] and [[Stephen Doughty MP]] in their calls for proscription.[^18]
|
||||
|
||||
### O9A Entryism Pattern
|
||||
|
||||
The O9A doctrine of [[Insight Roles]], first published in O9A's 1989 text "Insight Roles: A Guide" (collected in *[[Hostia]]: Secret Teachings of the O.N.A.*, Vol. I, 1992), explicitly instructs initiates undertaking the Internal Adept stage of the [[Seven Fold Way]] to adopt and fully inhabit a lifestyle alien to their usual existence, with enumerated options including service in the military or police. O9A literature explicitly frames infiltration of law enforcement and armed forces as spiritually meritorious within the Seven Fold Way framework.[^19]
|
||||
|
||||
Hannam's case is not a documented instance of O9A insight roles in law enforcement in the strict sense: the charges against him centred on National Action membership, not O9A membership or affiliation, and no published court document identifies O9A as a motivating framework for his decision to join the police. The link between National Action and O9A in this period ran primarily through Ryan Fleming's Yorkshire nexion, whose O9A influence on the broader organisation is documented but contested in terms of its reach to individual members such as Hannam.
|
||||
|
||||
What Hannam's case does document is the structural fact that a member of a proscribed terrorist organisation successfully passed police vetting and served as a constable for two years. Whether the mechanism was insight-role doctrine, opportunistic careerism, or a combination is not established in the trial record.
|
||||
|
||||
The documented cases of O9A adherents who joined military or law enforcement institutions as a direct expression of insight role doctrine include [[Ethan Phelan Melzer]], the U.S. Army private in the [[173rd Airborne Brigade]] who was convicted in the Southern District of New York after transmitting classified unit deployment information to O9A members on Telegram, conspiring to arrange a mass-casualty attack on his own soldiers. Melzer's prosecution memo stated explicitly that he "joined the Army in 2018 as part of what O9A referred to as an 'insight role.'" He was sentenced to 45 years in March 2023.[^20]
|
||||
|
||||
[[Nicholas Welker]], the [[Feuerkrieg Division]] leader convicted in the Eastern District of New York of conspiring to make interstate death threats, joined FKD explicitly as an O9A insight role, as documented in his prosecution records. He was sentenced to 44 months in April 2024.[^21]
|
||||
|
||||
Hannam's conviction stands as the only documented case of a serving UK police officer convicted of terrorism-related offences arising from membership of a proscribed far-right organisation. No equivalent case involving direct O9A membership in a UK law enforcement context had been prosecuted as of mid-2026.
|
||||
|
||||
### Footnotes
|
||||
|
||||
[^1]: Crown Prosecution Service. "Police officer guilty of membership of banned group and terrorism offences." 1 April 2021. https://www.cps.gov.uk/cps/news/police-officer-guilty-membership-banned-group-and-terrorism-offences
|
||||
|
||||
[^2]: Counter Terrorism Policing / CPS case evidence, as reported by ITV News. "Neo-Nazi police officer Ben Hannam guilty of belonging to terror group National Action." 1 April 2021. https://www.itv.com/news/2021-04-01/neo-nazi-police-officer-ben-hannam-guilty-of-belonging-to-terror-group-national-action
|
||||
|
||||
[^3]: Home Office. "Terrorism Act 2000 (Proscribed Organisations) (Amendment) (No. 2) Order 2016." 16 December 2016; Rudd statement quoted in Crown Prosecution Service National Action case records.
|
||||
|
||||
[^4]: CPS. "Former police officer jailed for National Action membership." 4 May 2021. https://www.cps.gov.uk/cps/news/former-police-officer-jailed-national-action-membership
|
||||
|
||||
[^5]: UPI. "London police officer found guilty of membership in banned neo-Nazi group." 1 April 2021. https://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2021/04/01/Britain-London-Metropolitan-Police-officer-Benjamin-Hannam-convicted-recruiter-neo-Nazi/7251617294659/
|
||||
|
||||
[^6]: The National News / National World. "British policeman convicted of terrorism after neo-Nazi data breach." 2021; National World. "What is National Action?" https://www.nationalworld.com/news/crime/what-is-national-action-banned-neo-nazi-group-explained-and-when-met-police-officer-benjamin-hannam-joined-3186990
|
||||
|
||||
[^7]: HS Today. "Former Police Constable Jailed for Terrorism Offenses." 2021. https://www.hstoday.us/subject-matter-areas/counterterrorism/former-police-constable-jailed-for-terrorism-offenses/; Bellingcat. "Massive White Supremacist Message Board Leak: How to Access and Interpret the Data." 6 November 2019. https://www.bellingcat.com/resources/how-tos/2019/11/06/massive-white-supremacist-message-board-leak-how-to-access-and-interpret-the-data/
|
||||
|
||||
[^8]: LBC. "Met Police officer in court over 'membership' of neo-Nazi group National Action." 2020. https://www.lbc.co.uk/crime/met-police-officer-national-action-benjamin-hannam/
|
||||
|
||||
[^9]: Bustle. "Met Police Officer Convicted For Far-Right Terrorism." 2021. https://www.bustle.com/life/met-police-officer-convicted-for-far-right-terrorism; Tell MAMA UK. "Neo-Nazi conviction is a 'unique' case." 2021. https://tellmamauk.org/neo-nazi-conviction-is-a-unique-case/
|
||||
|
||||
[^10]: R v Hannam, Sentencing Remarks, Central Criminal Court, 4 May 2021. Judge Anthony Leonard QC. https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/R-v-Hannam-Setencing-Remarks.pdf; https://www.judiciary.uk/judgments/r-v-hannam-sentencing-remarks/
|
||||
|
||||
[^11]: NBC News. "British police officer Ben Hannam jailed for joining neo-Nazi terror group." 30 April 2021. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/british-police-officer-ben-hannam-jailed-joining-neo-nazi-terror-n1265927
|
||||
|
||||
[^12]: PinkNews. "Met Police officer jailed for membership of banned Neo-nazi terror group." 30 April 2021. https://www.thepinknews.com/2021/04/30/met-police-officer-bejamin-hannam-neo-nazi-terror-group-national-action/
|
||||
|
||||
[^13]: Salten News / Emergency Services Times. "Met Police kicks out neo-Nazi officer Benjamin Hannam, 22, after terror conviction." April 2021.
|
||||
|
||||
[^14]: Crown Prosecution Service. "Co-founder of right-wing terror group convicted." May 2022. https://www.cps.gov.uk/cps/news/co-founder-right-wing-terror-group-convicted
|
||||
|
||||
[^15]: HMICFRS. "An inspection of vetting, misconduct, and misogyny in the police service." 2022. https://hmicfrs.justiceinspectorates.gov.uk/publication-html/an-inspection-of-vetting-misconduct-and-misogyny-in-the-police-service/
|
||||
|
||||
[^16]: Metropolitan Police. "Met continues drive to raise standards following historical vetting review [Operation Jorica]." January 2026. https://news.met.police.uk/news/met-continues-drive-to-raise-standards-following-historical-vetting-review-504908; Metropolitan Police. "Operation Jorica Report." London Assembly, January 2026. https://www.london.gov.uk/moderngovmb/documents/s84725/06a%20-%20MPS%20Operation_Jorica_Report%20-%20January_2026.pdf
|
||||
|
||||
[^17]: London Assembly. "Met Police Officers and Banned Far-Right Groups (1)." 2021. https://london.gov.uk/who-we-are/what-london-assembly-does/questions-mayor/find-an-answer/met-police-officers-and-banned-far-right-groups-1; London Assembly. "Met Police Officers and Banned Far-Right Groups (2)." 2021. https://www.london.gov.uk/who-we-are/what-london-assembly-does/questions-mayor/find-an-answer/met-police-officers-and-banned-far-right-groups-2
|
||||
|
||||
[^18]: Hansard, HC Deb, 13 July 2021, "Prevention and Suppression of Terrorism." https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2021-07-13/debates/673D4D8F-D90C-450B-B7E8-26B63018E5D3/PreventionAndSuppressionOfTerrorism; HOPE not hate. "Order of Nine Angles: An Incubator of Terrorism." State of Hate 2020. https://hopenothate.org.uk/chapter/order-of-nine-angles-an-incubator-of-terrorism/
|
||||
|
||||
[^19]: O9A. "Insight Roles: A Guide." In *Hostia: Secret Teachings of the O.N.A.*, Vol. I. 1992. Archived at o9a.org.
|
||||
|
||||
[^20]: U.S. Department of Justice, USAO-SDNY. "Former U.S. Army Soldier Sentenced To 45 Years In Prison For Attempting To Murder Fellow Service Members In Deadly Ambush." March 2023. https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/former-us-army-soldier-sentenced-45-years-prison-attempting-murder-fellow-service; Prosecution sentencing memorandum, United States v. Melzer, S1 20 Cr. 314 (SDNY), cited in Courthouse News Service.
|
||||
|
||||
[^21]: DOJ USAO-EDNY. "Leader of White Supremacist Group Pleads Guilty to Conspiring to Make Death Threats Against Journalist." September 2023. https://www.justice.gov/usao-edny/pr/leader-white-supremacist-group-pleads-guilty-conspiring-make-death-threats-against; United States v. Welker, 1:23-cr-00141 (E.D.N.Y.).
|
||||
40
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Bill Moser.md
Normal file
40
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Bill Moser.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,40 @@
|
|||
---
|
||||
category: "Law Enforcement & Legal"
|
||||
tags:
|
||||
- Person
|
||||
- FBI
|
||||
- AtomwaffenDivision
|
||||
- FBIInformant
|
||||
- USA
|
||||
- SouthCarolina
|
||||
summary: "Bill Moser is the FBI Special Agent at the Columbia, South Carolina field office who served as Joshua Caleb Sutter's primary handler throughout the Atomwaffen Division infiltration."
|
||||
created: 2026-05-22
|
||||
updated: 2026-05-22
|
||||
location: "Columbia, South Carolina"
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
Bill Moser is an [[FBI]] Special Agent assigned to the [[FBI Columbia Field Office]] in [[Columbia, South Carolina]] who served as the primary handler for paid informant [[Joshua Caleb Sutter]] during the [[FBI]] investigation into [[Atomwaffen Division]].
|
||||
|
||||
### Identification in Trial Testimony
|
||||
|
||||
Moser was identified by name through Sutter's own testimony at the September 2021 trial of [[Kaleb Cole]] in [[United States v. Shea et al.]], 2:20-cr-00032 ([[Western District of Washington|W.D. Wash.]], Judge [[John C. Coughenour]]). Sutter testified that "on the direction of his FBI handler, Special Agent Bill Moser of the Columbia, South Carolina, field office, Sutter became part of the underground militant group," referring to [[Atomwaffen Division]].[^1] This testimony was corroborated in the reporting of journalist [[Ali Winston]], drawing on trial transcripts.[^1]
|
||||
|
||||
No additional information about Moser, his rank, tenure, other cases, or supervisory chain within the Columbia office, has been confirmed in publicly available sources. Former and current FBI agents from the Columbia field office either did not recall Sutter or declined comment when asked by journalists.[^2]
|
||||
|
||||
### Operational Direction
|
||||
|
||||
According to Sutter's trial testimony, Moser directed Sutter to join Atomwaffen Division from his existing position within [[Tempel ov Blood]] and the [[Order of Nine Angles]] (O9A) network. Moser's direction encompassed Sutter attending the [[2018 AWD Death Valley Hate Camp]] (February 2018) and the [[2019 AWD Nuclear Congress]] in [[Las Vegas, Nevada]] (September 2019). Rolling Stone reported that FBI funds were used to cover member travel and lodging for the Las Vegas gathering.[^1]
|
||||
|
||||
Moser's field office began an intensified payment period to Sutter specifically from February 7, 2018, the start of the documented $78,133.20 payment tranche that "almost entirely coincides with his work on the investigation into Mr. Cole" per the Cole defense motion.[^3] This payment timeline places Moser's direction of the AWD infiltration operation within a window bookended by the February 2018 Hate Camp and the September 2019 Nuclear Congress.
|
||||
|
||||
### What Is Not in the Record
|
||||
|
||||
No public document addresses whether Moser was aware of, authorized, or attempted to restrict Sutter's operation of [[Martinet Press]] during the informant relationship. The FBI declined to comment on this question when approached by journalists. Moser himself is not on record addressing the publishing activities.
|
||||
|
||||
### Footnotes
|
||||
|
||||
[^1]: Winston, Ali. "The Satanist Neo-Nazi Plot to Murder U.S. Soldiers," *Rolling Stone,* 2021. https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/the-satanist-neo-nazi-plot-to-murder-u-s-soldiers-1352629/ Corroborated by trial testimony: United States v. Shea et al., 2:20-cr-00032 (W.D. Wash., September 2021). DocumentCloud doc 22056395: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/22056395-trial-testimony-of-joshua-sutter/
|
||||
|
||||
[^2]: Yahoo News / USA TODAY. "He publishes books on satanism and torture to inspire neo-Nazis. The FBI has paid him $140,000." 2021. https://ca.news.yahoo.com/publishes-books-satanism-torture-inspire-130243921.html
|
||||
|
||||
[^3]: Motion to Suppress, United States v. Shea et al., 2:20-cr-00032 (W.D. Wash.), August 13, 2021. Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/kaleb-cole-august-13-2021-motion-to-suppress-1
|
||||
49
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Christopher Jackson (Baltimore CHS).md
Normal file
49
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Christopher Jackson (Baltimore CHS).md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,49 @@
|
|||
---
|
||||
category: "Law Enforcement & Legal"
|
||||
tags:
|
||||
- Person
|
||||
- FBI
|
||||
- FBIInformant
|
||||
- FederalCase
|
||||
- InfrastructureAttack
|
||||
- AtomwaffenDivision
|
||||
- BrandonRussell
|
||||
- USA
|
||||
- Maryland
|
||||
summary: "Christopher Jackson is the FBI confidential human source designated CHS-1 in the 2023 Baltimore Power Grid Conspiracy case, whose testimony was central to Brandon Russell's 2025 conviction and whose undisclosed pre-testimony payment became the basis for Russell's denied new-trial motion."
|
||||
created: 2026-05-22
|
||||
updated: 2026-05-22
|
||||
location: "United States"
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
Christopher Jackson is the [[FBI]] [[confidential human source]] (CHS) designated CHS-1 in the [[2023 Baltimore Power Grid Conspiracy]] case, [[United States v. Russell, 1:23-cr-00029 (D. Md.)]]. Jackson, who worked professionally as a researcher specializing in extremism and domestic terrorism, was recruited into FBI informant work through an agent acquaintance and had been operating across multiple FBI investigations before his contact with [[Brandon Russell]] in 2022. Jackson is identified by pseudonym in court filings; his full identity was withheld from the defense under a September 2024 witness disguise ruling by Senior U.S. District Judge [[James K. Bredar]].
|
||||
|
||||
### Role in the Baltimore Investigation
|
||||
|
||||
In June 2022, Jackson made contact with Russell through invite-only neo-Nazi [[Telegram]] channels in which both were participating. Over the following months, Jackson developed a relationship with Russell in which Russell disclosed infrastructure attack plans, distributed propaganda materials, and attempted to recruit Jackson into the [[National Socialist Resistance Front]] (NSRF) as a prospective member, telling Jackson that prospective members included individuals from Maryland and the Carolinas. Jackson also communicated with [[Sarah Beth Clendaniel]], capturing evidence of her operational planning including the January 29, 2023 recorded conversation in which she described the five [[Baltimore Gas and Electric]] (BGE) substation targets and stated the simultaneous attack "would permanently completely lay this city to waste."
|
||||
|
||||
Jackson served as the government's primary live witness. He and a second confidential human source (CHS-2) were the main witnesses who could place Russell and Clendaniel in the operational planning conversations.
|
||||
|
||||
### Testimony and the Payment Dispute
|
||||
|
||||
Jackson testified at Russell's trial on January 29, 2025. In his testimony, he disclosed that he had received FBI compensation of "about $70,000," comprising approximately $40,000 in direct payments and $30,000 in reimbursements for plane tickets and travel expenses across several investigations.
|
||||
|
||||
On January 27, 2025 (the day jury selection occurred, two days before Jackson testified), the government paid Jackson an additional $7,180.11. The [[Department of Justice]] did not disclose this payment until March 19, 2025, six weeks after Russell's February 4, 2025 conviction. Jackson's total compensation across all FBI informant work was thus approximately $80,000.
|
||||
|
||||
Russell subsequently moved for a new trial, arguing Jackson committed perjury by understating his total compensation and that the non-disclosure of the final payment before testimony violated [[Brady v. Maryland]]. Bredar denied the motion on April 29, 2025, finding the error "unfortunate" and the payment timing raising "some concern" but insufficient to undermine the verdict given the limited scope of Jackson's testimony, corroborating evidence, and the jury's awareness of his prior disclosed compensation.[^1]
|
||||
|
||||
### Witness Disguise Ruling
|
||||
|
||||
Jackson testified under a court-ordered "light disguise" (altered facial features or hairstyle), using a pseudonym, and the courtroom was partially closed during his testimony. The overflow room received audio and video. Bredar issued the disguise ruling in September 2024 after finding that Russell and his sympathizers posed an "unusually heightened threat of danger" to witnesses cooperating with the government.
|
||||
|
||||
Jackson's true identity was withheld from Russell's defense team under the ruling, a decision Russell's attorney [[Ian Goldstein]] characterized as "a huge impediment to investigating and presenting a defense."[^2]
|
||||
|
||||
### Parallel to the Sutter/Cole Pattern
|
||||
|
||||
The Jackson case is structurally parallel to the informant-disclosure issues in [[United States v. Shea et al. (2020)]], the [[Kaleb Cole]] prosecution where [[Joshua Caleb Sutter]]'s paid informant status was not disclosed in the original affidavit. In both cases, the government acknowledged a disclosure failure regarding informant payments, the defense argued the omission was material to credibility, and the presiding judge denied suppression or new trial relief, finding the omission legally insufficient to undermine the conviction. The Russell/Jackson case is the most recent documented instance of an AWD-network prosecution producing an informant-payment disclosure controversy, and it resulted in the same outcome as Cole: conviction upheld, motion denied.
|
||||
|
||||
### Footnotes
|
||||
|
||||
[^1]: The Daily Record. "Neo-Nazi who plotted to destroy BGE substations denied new trial." May 2, 2025. https://thedailyrecord.com/2025/05/02/neo-nazi-baltimore-substation-trial-denial/; NBC News. "Neo-Nazi leader among 2 arrested in plot to attack Baltimore's power grid." February 2023. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/fbi-arrests-2-suspects-accused-planning-attack-baltimore-power-grid-rcna69324
|
||||
|
||||
[^2]: U.S. District Court, D. Md. Opinion re: Witness Disguise, Case No. 23-0056. September 2024. https://www2.mdd.uscourts.gov/Opinions/Opinions/23-0056%20Russell%20Opinion%20re%20witness%20disguise.pdf; Reuters / Newsweek. "Neo-Nazi Leader Sentenced to 20 Years for Plot to Sabotage Baltimore Power Grid." August 7, 2025. https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2025-08-07/neo-nazi-leader-sentenced-to-20-years-for-plot-to-sabotage-baltimore-power-grid
|
||||
59
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Dallas Humber.md
Normal file
59
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Dallas Humber.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,59 @@
|
|||
---
|
||||
category: "Extremism & Violent Networks"
|
||||
tags:
|
||||
- Person
|
||||
- TerrorgramCollective
|
||||
- NeoNazi
|
||||
- Accelerationism
|
||||
- FederalCase
|
||||
- California
|
||||
- USA
|
||||
- TerroristConviction
|
||||
summary: "Dallas Humber is an Elk Grove, California woman who led the Terrorgram Collective's inner circle from July 2022, was charged in a 15-count indictment under case number 2:24-cr-00257 in the Eastern District of California, pleaded guilty to all counts on August 8, 2025, and was sentenced to 30 years in federal prison on December 19, 2025."
|
||||
created: 2026-05-21
|
||||
updated: 2026-05-22
|
||||
born: 1990
|
||||
location: "Elk Grove, California"
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
[[Dallas Humber]] (born approximately 1990, [[Elk Grove, California]]) led the inner core of the [[Terrorgram Collective]] from approximately July 2022 until her arrest on September 5, 2024, describing her own role as guiding "disaffected young white men through the end of the radicalization process." She was arrested by the [[FBI]] alongside co-leader [[Matthew Robert Allison]], charged under case number [[United States v. Humber|2:24-cr-00257]] in the [[Eastern District of California]], pleaded guilty to all 15 counts on August 8, 2025, and was sentenced to 360 months (30 years) in federal prison by U.S. District Judge [[Dena Coggins]] on December 19, 2025, with a lifetime supervised release term.[^1] [[Attorney General]] [[Pamela Bondi]]'s [[DOJ]] announced the sentence as a landmark in the prosecution of transnational online terrorist networks.
|
||||
|
||||
### Leadership of the Inner Collective
|
||||
|
||||
Humber assumed leadership of Terrorgram's inner operational circle in July 2022 following the May 2022 arrest of co-founder [[Pavol Beňadik]] in Slovakia. Under her direction, the inner collective produced *The Hard Reset: A Terrorgram Production* (261 pp., July 2022), the network's most operationally specific publication.
|
||||
|
||||
Humber's operational approach went beyond publishing. She maintained direct personal contact with individuals she identified as candidates for violence, directing them through the radicalization pipeline she described in her own terms. Court documents indicate she had communicated in October 2022 with a [[Telegram]] user planning a racially motivated school attack in Brazil, one month before [[Gabriel Castiglioni]] carried out the [[Aracruz school shootings]] on November 25, 2022, killing four students and wounding eleven. DOJ prosecutors attributed the Aracruz attack to her guidance as one of seven attacks or plots "inspired or guided by" her leadership.[^1]
|
||||
|
||||
Prosecutors also alleged that after her arrest in September 2024 and while held in pretrial detention, Humber continued attempting to communicate with and groom potential attackers from within the detention facility. This post-arrest conduct was noted in sentencing proceedings.
|
||||
|
||||
### Federal Indictment: Count Breakdown
|
||||
|
||||
The 37-page indictment, filed September 5, 2024 and unsealed September 9, 2024, charged Humber and Allison jointly on all 15 counts. The counts, as described in DOJ press releases and confirmed by public docket records for case 2:24-cr-00257, were:
|
||||
|
||||
Count 1: Conspiracy. Counts 2-5: Four counts of soliciting hate crimes (targeting individuals on the basis of race, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, and gender identity). Counts 6-8: Three counts of soliciting the murder of federal officials. Counts 9-11: Three counts of doxing federal officials (publishing private identifying information with intent to threaten). Count 12: One count of threatening communications (interstate). Counts 13-14: Two counts of distributing bombmaking instructions and information relating to destructive devices. Count 15: Conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists, under 18 U.S.C. § 2339A.
|
||||
|
||||
The material support count (Count 15) was the most legally significant: 18 U.S.C. § 2339A applies to providing material support "knowing or intending" that it will be used in connection with specific terrorism offenses. Its companion statute, § 2339B, is restricted to designated [[Foreign Terrorist Organizations]] and cannot reach purely domestic actors. The decision to charge under 2339A rather than 2339B reflected both the domestic nature of Humber and Allison's activities and the fact that Terrorgram had not yet received a formal FTO designation (only the subsequent SDGT designation in January 2025). [[Lawfare]] analysts described this as a significant, if not entirely novel, use of the provision against an online white-supremacist content operation.[^2]
|
||||
|
||||
Combined maximum exposure across all 15 counts was 220 years.
|
||||
|
||||
### Specific Conduct Cited by Prosecutors
|
||||
|
||||
The indictment and subsequent DOJ press releases described specific conduct beyond general propaganda operation:
|
||||
|
||||
Infrastructure incitement: On approximately December 26, 2022, Humber posted images of electrical substation transformer components with the notation "for educational purposes only of course." On or about January 20, 2023, following the Randolph County, North Carolina [[EnergyUnited]] substation shooting of January 17, 2023 (which caused approximately $250,000 in damage), Humber posted a link to a news article about the attack and stated: "It seems as though this avenue of attack, an incredibly effective one at that, has really caught on. I like to think that all our hard work in detailing its effectiveness and showing our community how easy it is not only to do but to get away with, has helped encourage this." Prosecutors presented this post as evidence that she actively encouraged the replication of infrastructure attacks.[^3]
|
||||
|
||||
Brazil pre-attack contact: In October 2022, Humber communicated via Telegram with a user who stated he was planning a racially motivated school shooting in Brazil. One month later, on November 25, 2022, [[Gabriel Castiglioni]] (16) attacked two schools in [[Aracruz, Brazil]], killing four students and wounding eleven, wearing a swastika patch. DOJ prosecutors attributed the Aracruz attack to Humber's guidance as one of seven attacks or plots "inspired or guided by" her leadership.
|
||||
|
||||
Wisconsin murder-for-hire plot: Among the seven attacks attributed to Humber by DOJ, one involved a Wisconsin plot to murder two individuals as part of a broader scheme to assassinate a federal official. The specific targets and co-conspirators in that plot were not publicly identified in DOJ press releases.
|
||||
|
||||
### Arrest and Conviction
|
||||
|
||||
The FBI arrested Humber on September 5, 2024, in a coordinated operation. She and Allison were charged in the 15-count federal indictment described above. The prosecution was handled jointly by the [[Civil Rights Division]] of DOJ, the [[National Security Division]] of DOJ, and the [[U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of California]].
|
||||
|
||||
Humber's change-of-plea hearing was set for August 8, 2025; she entered guilty pleas to all 15 counts at that hearing. On December 19, 2025, Judge Coggins sentenced her to 30 years (360 months) in federal prison plus lifetime supervised release. The 30-year sentence is the longest imposed on any Terrorgram Collective member in any jurisdiction and exceeded even the 20 years later given to co-founder [[Matthew Althorpe]] by Canada's Ontario Superior Court in March 2026.[^1]
|
||||
|
||||
### Footnotes
|
||||
|
||||
[^1]: U.S. Department of Justice, OPA. "Leader of Transnational Terrorist Group Sentenced to 30 Years in Prison for Soliciting Hate Crimes and Murder, and Conspiring to Provide Material Support to Terrorists." December 19, 2025. https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/leader-transnational-terrorist-group-sentenced-30-years-prison-soliciting-hate-crimes-and; U.S. Department of Justice, USAO-EDCA. Sentencing press release. December 19, 2025. https://www.justice.gov/usao-edca/pr/leader-transnational-terrorist-group-sentenced-30-years-prison-soliciting-hate-crimes
|
||||
[^2]: U.S. Department of Justice, OPA. "Leaders of Transnational Terrorist Group Charged with Soliciting Hate Crimes, Soliciting the Murder of Federal Officials, and Conspiring to Provide Material Support to Terrorists." September 9, 2024. https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/leaders-transnational-terrorist-group-charged-soliciting-hate-crimes-soliciting-murder; Lawfare. "Why the Terrorgram Collective Designation Matters." January 2025. https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/why-the-terrorgram-collective-designation-matters
|
||||
[^3]: Fox 8 / WGHP. "'Terrorgram' leaders Dallas Humber, Matthew Allison referenced North Carolina EnergyUnited substation shooting, court documents show." September 2024. https://myfox8.com/news/storylines/power-grid-attack/indicted-terrorgram-neo-nazi-cited-randolph-county-substation-attack-court-documents-show-this-avenue-of-attack-has-really-caught-on/
|
||||
101
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/David Myatt.md
Normal file
101
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/David Myatt.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,101 @@
|
|||
---
|
||||
category: "Extremism & Violent Networks"
|
||||
tags:
|
||||
- Person
|
||||
- O9A
|
||||
- NeoNazi
|
||||
- UK
|
||||
- Occultism
|
||||
- Satanism
|
||||
- Accelerationism
|
||||
- Islam
|
||||
- AntonLong
|
||||
- CombatEighteen
|
||||
- IntelligenceHistory
|
||||
created: 2026-05-21
|
||||
updated: 2026-05-22
|
||||
summary: "David Myatt is a British far-right ideologue widely attributed as the founder of the Order of Nine Angles under the pseudonym Anton Long, whose writings directly influenced the 1999 London nailbomber David Copeland, yet he was never charged with terrorism despite decades of published incitement to murder and a three-year Scotland Yard investigation."
|
||||
born: 1950-11-29
|
||||
location: "Worcestershire, United Kingdom"
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
[[David Myatt]] is a British ideologue who spent three decades as an active participant in the neo-Nazi underground of England, serving at various points as organizer, theorist, and instigator across multiple violent far-right groups before converting to Islam in 1998 and subsequently claiming to have renounced all extremism. He is widely attributed by scholars as the primary author of the [[Order of Nine Angles]] (O9A) under the pseudonym [[Anton Long]], though he has denied this identification throughout his life. His written output, produced under both his own name and the Long pseudonym, has been found in the possession of perpetrators of mass violence, cited in terrorism trials, and classified as a terrorist manual by the British government.
|
||||
|
||||
### Early Life and Introduction to the Far Right
|
||||
|
||||
David Wulstan Myatt was born in 1950. He grew up partly in Tanganyika (now [[Tanzania]]), where his father worked as a civil servant for the British colonial administration. The family also spent time in the Far East, where Myatt studied martial arts and, by his own account, developed an early interest in Greek, Sanskrit, logic, astronomy, and philosophy.
|
||||
|
||||
Returning to England, Myatt became involved in neo-Nazi politics while still in secondary school. By the late 1960s he was a member of [[Colin Jordan]]'s [[British Movement]], one of the leading neo-Nazi organizations in Britain at the time. He remained in the British Movement until approximately 1974, when he broke with Jordan and co-founded a splinter organization.
|
||||
|
||||
### Criminal Record: 1970s Convictions
|
||||
|
||||
The earliest documented criminal record for Myatt relates to violent racial attacks in the early 1970s while he was active in the neo-Nazi movement in [[Leeds, England]]. Two separate terms of imprisonment have been documented from this period.
|
||||
|
||||
The first arose from a "Paki-bashing" incident in which Myatt led a gang of skinheads in a racially motivated violent attack. He was identified as the gang leader and sentenced to imprisonment. The second term followed from activities connected to his co-founding of the [[National Democratic Freedom Movement]] (NDFM) with [[Eddy Morrison]] in late 1973 or early 1974. Police from the [[Yorkshire Regional Crime Squad]] raided Myatt's attic flat in Leeds and arrested him along with three other gang members. Myatt and Morrison were held on remand because investigators believed they would intimidate witnesses. The NDFM is described in published accounts as a "notoriously violent group" whose activities ended when Myatt was jailed. No BAILII entry for these cases has been located in open-source search, consistent with the fact that Crown Court records from the early 1970s predate BAILII's systematic coverage.[^1]
|
||||
|
||||
### Combat 18 and the National Socialist Movement
|
||||
|
||||
After a period of reduced public visibility, Myatt re-emerged in the British neo-Nazi scene in the early 1990s, becoming active in paramilitary and neo-Nazi circles including [[Column 88]] and [[Combat 18]]. The [[Observer]] newspaper later identified him as the "ideological heavyweight" behind Combat 18, a neo-Nazi group with documented links to murders and serious violence in Britain and continental Europe.[^2] [[Nick Lowles]] characterises him in *White Riot* as "one of Britain's foremost post-war national socialist thinkers."[^3]
|
||||
|
||||
The split that created the [[National Socialist Movement (UK, 1997)]] emerged directly from the [[Charlie Sargent]] murder crisis. In early 1997, ITV's [[World in Action]] programme claimed that Sargent, then on remand for murder, had acted as a paid informant for the police. While Sargent was disowned by part of the C18 rank and file, his brother [[Steve Sargent]] remained loyal and, together with Myatt, led approximately fifty like-minded members away from C18 to found the NSM in June 1997. Steve Sargent served as the NSM's propaganda director and produced its magazine, *White Dragon*. David Myatt was the NSM's first leader.[^3]
|
||||
|
||||
Myatt resigned as NSM leader in March 1998 following his [[Metropolitan Police Service]] SO12 counter-terrorism arrest (see below). He was succeeded by [[Tony Williams]], a former member of the [[International Third Position]]. Under Williams's leadership, the NSM recruited [[David Copeland]] in early 1999. Copeland, then living in [[Fleet, Hampshire]], was appointed NSM Southern Regional Organiser. A letter from Williams welcomed him "into leadership, responsibility and accountability to your comrades."[^4]
|
||||
|
||||
In 1998, while serving as NSM leader, Myatt called publicly for "the creation of racial terror with bombs," a statement documented by the BBC's *Panorama* programme.[^5] During this period, Myatt wrote "[[A Practical Guide to Aryan Revolution]]," a text the British government subsequently classified as a terrorist manual.
|
||||
|
||||
### The SO12 Investigation and Non-Prosecution
|
||||
|
||||
In February 1998, detectives from the Metropolitan Police Service's SO12 counter-terrorism branch raided Myatt's home in [[Worcestershire]] and removed computers and files. He was arrested on suspicion of incitement to murder and incitement to racial hatred in connection with his posting of "A Practical Guide to Aryan Revolution" on a website operated by [[Bernard Klatt]] in British Columbia, Canada, in November 1997. The case was referred to [[Interpol]], the [[FBI]], and Canadian police services for a three-year international investigation. It was eventually dropped because the evidence supplied by the Canadian authorities was assessed as insufficient to secure a conviction.[^4]
|
||||
|
||||
The question of why Myatt was never prosecuted for terrorism is not fully answered in the public record. The documented facts are: (a) he published texts classified as terrorism manuals; (b) one of those texts was found in the possession of a man who killed three people; (c) he was investigated for incitement to murder and incitement to racial hatred in 1998 but the case was dropped; (d) he published explicit calls for "racial terror with bombs" while NSM leader; (e) his former organisation, Combat 18, was proscribed in 2020 under S.I. 2020/200; (f) O9A, attributed to him as Anton Long, was not proscribed in the UK as of mid-2026 despite members being convicted of terrorism offences. No official explanation for the absence of terrorism prosecution has been published.[^6]
|
||||
|
||||
### David Copeland and the "Practical Guide"
|
||||
|
||||
Copeland obtained and studied Myatt's "A Practical Guide to Aryan Revolution," which he had downloaded from the internet. A copy was found in his flat by police after the bombings. The document contained chapter headings including "Assassination," "Terror Bombing," and "Racial War" and, according to [[Michael Whine]] of the [[Board of Deputies of British Jews]], "provided a detailed step-by-step guide for terrorist insurrection with advice on assassination targets, rationale for bombing and sabotage campaigns, and rules of engagement."[^7]
|
||||
|
||||
Copeland detonated three nail bombs in London between 17 and 30 April 1999, targeting the [[Brixton]] Black community market, [[Brick Lane]]'s Bangladeshi community, and the [[Admiral Duncan pub]] in Soho. Three people died at the Admiral Duncan: [[John Light]], [[Nick Moore]], and [[Andrea Dykes]] together with her unborn child. 139 people were injured across the three attacks. Copeland was convicted on 30 June 2000 at the Old Bailey of three counts of murder and three charges of planting bombs and sentenced to six life terms. In March 2007, the High Court set his minimum tariff at 50 years.[^8]
|
||||
|
||||
[[Searchlight Magazine]] and BBC *Panorama* conducted a joint investigation that documented the links between Copeland and the NSM and the extent to which he had been influenced by Myatt's writings. Despite this documented chain from Myatt's published text to Copeland's stated motivation to three deaths, no charges against Myatt arose from the Copeland case. His February 1998 investigation had already been dropped by the time the bombs were placed in April 1999.[^4]
|
||||
|
||||
### The Order of Nine Angles and Anton Long
|
||||
|
||||
Scholars who have studied O9A in depth almost uniformly attribute the Anton Long pseudonym to Myatt. The argument rests on several independent lines of evidence. First, the anti-fascist magazine [[Searchlight Magazine]] identified Myatt as Anton Long in 1998, at a point when no sophisticated counter-narrative had been constructed. Second, the philosophical concepts shared between Myatt's neo-Nazi writings and O9A texts are highly specific and numerous, including the concept of an "acausal" realm, a theory of history organized into distinct "aeons," advocacy for space colonization as a long-term racial project, and the design and rules of "the [[Star Game]]." Third, both bodies of work emerged from the same West Midlands and Welsh Marches neo-Nazi milieu in the 1970s, the documented time and place of O9A's formation. Fourth, Myatt's writing style under his own name is consistent with the long prose of Anton Long's O9A texts in ways that stylometric analysis has reinforced.[^9]
|
||||
|
||||
The scholarly consensus as of 2026 is that Myatt authored the O9A corpus under the pseudonym Anton Long, though this has not been established in a legal proceeding. The evidentiary trajectory is significant: early attributions (Searchlight, April 1998) were dismissed as unsubstantiated; mid-period scholarly work by [[Jacob C. Senholt]] (thesis, 2013) contributed the most rigorous stylometric and biographical evidence; and in 2016, sociologist of religion [[Massimo Introvigne]] noted that in the face of Senholt's and others' evidence, O9A itself had "more or less acknowledged that 'Anton Long' was a 'nom de plume' of Myatt."[^9] That quasi-admission from the organisation itself is the strongest available piece of evidence short of a direct confession, since it is the one concession O9A had persistently refused to make for decades.
|
||||
|
||||
Scholars Introvigne, [[Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke]], [[Clive Henry]], Senholt, and [[Andrew G. Palella]] all conclude Myatt is Long. [[Jeffrey Kaplan]]'s 1998 position (separate individuals) was softened in his 2000 writing and has not been the majority scholarly view for some time.[^9]
|
||||
|
||||
The detailed ideological content of O9A, including the Seven Fold Way, Insight Roles, and the nexion structure, is documented in the [[Order of Nine Angles]] vault entry.
|
||||
|
||||
### Conversion to Islam: Documented Details
|
||||
|
||||
Myatt converted to Islam at [[Jamia Masjid Ghousia]] in Worcester on 6 September 1998, with his Shahadah witnessed by Hafiz Mohammad Tufail and Qadi Abdur Sa'ouf. He subsequently attended prayers at mosques in Worcestershire for many years. As a Muslim he operated under two documented pseudonyms: Abdul-Aziz ibn Myatt and Abdul al-Qari. He travelled and spoke in Arab countries and wrote what is characterised as one of the most detailed defences in the English language of Islamic suicide operations. He expressed support for [[Osama bin Laden]] and the [[Taliban]], described the Holocaust as a "hoax," and argued that the jihadist distinction between Muslims and unbelievers superseded racial categories.[^10]
|
||||
|
||||
At a [[UNESCO]] conference on antisemitism in Paris in 2003, researchers stated that Myatt "has converted to Islam, praises bin Laden and al Qaeda, calls the 9/11 attacks 'acts of heroism,' and urges the killing of Jews."[^10] He continued contact with former neo-Nazi associates during this period and advocated ideological alliances between neo-Nazis and Islamists, a position consistent with both his Nazi and Islamist frameworks.
|
||||
|
||||
British intelligence monitored Myatt during the Islamic period, according to multiple secondary accounts, but no prosecution or restriction order arose from that monitoring.[^2]
|
||||
|
||||
### The "Numinous Way" and Claimed Renunciation
|
||||
|
||||
Myatt's departure from Islam and extremism is best characterised as gradual. His July 2010 autobiography *Myngath* contained content that did not clearly renounce his Muslim identity. A post on his Islamist weblog in September 2010 re-affirmed Muslim identity even while doubts were developing. By 2011, he had fully articulated what he called the "Numinous Way" (or *pathei-mathos* philosophy), an apolitical personal framework centred on empathy, humility, and what he terms the "numinous." He has lived as a private individual in rural England since approximately 2010-2011 and maintains an active personal blog at davidmyatt.wordpress.com, with posts documented as recently as March 2026.[^11]
|
||||
|
||||
Researchers and law enforcement officials have treated this claimed renunciation with skepticism, noting that O9A texts continued to circulate under the Anton Long name during and after this period, and that Myatt offered no explanation for the O9A authorship question consistent with an innocent reading. The [[Counter Extremism Project]] listed Myatt as one of the twenty most dangerous extremists in the world as of 2021, on the basis that his published writings continue to circulate and influence violent actors.[^12]
|
||||
|
||||
### Documented Influence
|
||||
|
||||
Regardless of whether Myatt authored the O9A corpus, his documented writings under his own name have been found in the possession of perpetrators of political violence across multiple countries and decades. The specific mechanisms of influence include: direct circulation of his neo-Nazi essays through Combat 18 and NSM channels; the distribution of "A Practical Guide to Aryan Revolution"; and, if the attribution to Anton Long is accepted, the entire O9A theological and initiatory structure, including the Insight Roles doctrine, that subsequently shaped [[Atomwaffen Division]], [[Tempel ov Blood]], and the broader radicalization pipeline running through [[Terrorgram]] into the [[764 Network|764]] ecosystem.
|
||||
|
||||
### Footnotes
|
||||
|
||||
[^1]: Notes From The Borderland (Larry O'Hara). "Combat 18 and MI5: Some Background Notes." borderland.co.uk. Confirmed: Darren Wells (McKenzie) as the documented Special Branch informant; the NDFM period and Myatt's imprisonment confirmed in Eddy Morrison obituary, Heritage and Destiny, 2020.
|
||||
[^2]: The Observer (UK). Referenced in: Counter Extremism Project. "Order of Nine Angles." https://www.counterextremism.com/supremacy/order-nine-angles
|
||||
[^3]: Lowles, Nick. *White Riot: The Violent Story of Combat 18.* Milo Books, 2001.
|
||||
[^4]: Searchlight Magazine. "25 years on: The hunt for the London nailbomber," April 2024. https://searchlightmagazine.com/2024/04/25-years-on-the-hunt-for-the-london-nailbomber/; Internet Archive, "A Short Biography of David Myatt," ia600102.us.archive.org.
|
||||
[^5]: BBC *Panorama*. 1998 broadcast. Referenced in: Religion Media Centre. "Factsheet: The Order of Nine Angles." https://religionmediacentre.org.uk/factsheets/factsheet-nine-angles/
|
||||
[^6]: Hansard, HC Deb, 13 July 2021, "Prevention and Suppression of Terrorism." https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2021-07-13/debates/673D4D8F-D90C-450B-B7E8-26B63018E5D3/PreventionAndSuppressionOfTerrorism
|
||||
[^7]: Whine, Michael, Board of Deputies of British Jews. Quoted in multiple secondary accounts of the 1998 arrest.
|
||||
[^8]: 1999 London nail bombings sentencing; High Court minimum tariff March 2007. PinkNews, "Soho bomber David Copeland loses appeal over sentence," July 2011. https://www.thepinknews.com/2011/07/01/soho-bomber-david-copeland-loses-appeal-over-sentence/
|
||||
[^9]: Introvigne, Massimo. *Satanism: A Social History.* Brill, 2016; Tandfonline. "David Myatt's Imagined Emotionology, his Striving for Authentic Aryan Emotional Communities, and the Dishonourable Wulstan Tedder." 2024. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14631180.2024.2319484
|
||||
[^10]: UNESCO Paris conference 2003 statement; "Abdul-Aziz ibn Myatt" conversion details. en-academic.com/dic.nsf/enwiki/9913622 (used as roadmap; primary source cited therein is UNESCO conference record).
|
||||
[^11]: David Myatt blog, davidmyatt.wordpress.com. Most recent post retrieved: March 2026.
|
||||
[^12]: Counter Extremism Project. "Order of Nine Angles." https://www.counterextremism.com/supremacy/order-nine-angles
|
||||
63
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Ethan Phelan Melzer.md
Normal file
63
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Ethan Phelan Melzer.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,63 @@
|
|||
---
|
||||
category: "Extremism & Violent Networks"
|
||||
tags:
|
||||
- Person
|
||||
- AtomwaffenDivision
|
||||
- O9A
|
||||
- RapeWaffenDivision
|
||||
- NeoNazi
|
||||
- DomesticTerrorism
|
||||
- Military
|
||||
- FederalCase
|
||||
- USA
|
||||
created: 2026-05-21
|
||||
updated: 2026-05-22
|
||||
summary: "Ethan Phelan Melzer was a U.S. Army paratrooper and O9A member who in 2020 leaked his unit's classified deployment information to a believed ISIS-connected contact to enable a lethal attack on his platoon, sentenced to 45 years in federal prison."
|
||||
location: "United States"
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
[[Ethan Phelan Melzer]] was a soldier in the [[U.S. Army]] assigned to the [[173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team]] based in [[Vicenza, Italy]], and a member of both [[Atomwaffen Division]] and the [[Order of Nine Angles]] (O9A), who in 2020 transmitted sensitive military information about his unit's troop strength, locations, and vulnerabilities to an undercover [[FBI]] operative he believed was an O9A contact who would relay the information to [[ISIS]] for use in a lethal attack on Melzer's own platoon. He was convicted of terrorism-related charges and sentenced to 45 years in federal prison, one of the longest sentences imposed on an AWD-affiliated individual and the most significant case establishing O9A's practical connection to military penetration.[^1]
|
||||
|
||||
### O9A Membership and AWD Connection
|
||||
|
||||
Melzer was an active member of the O9A's online community, participating in forums and channels associated with the organization's occultist accelerationist ideology. His specific O9A nexion was the [[RapeWaffen Division]], a Telegram-based channel combining neo-Nazi accelerationist branding with O9A's doctrine that rape and murder are instruments of ideological warfare. Melzer used the alias "Etil Reggad" within the RapeWaffen Division channel, and described himself as having "already self-initiated" into O9A before joining. His simultaneous AWD affiliation reflected the degree to which O9A and AWD had merged into an overlapping ideological community following [[Tempel ov Blood]]'s infiltration of AWD's leadership in 2017. O9A's [[Insight Roles]] doctrine explicitly instructs initiates to commit real criminal acts as a form of spiritual progression, and joining the military or law enforcement for purposes of sabotage or facilitated attack is a recognized category within that framework.[^1]
|
||||
|
||||
### The 2020 Plot
|
||||
|
||||
In 2020, while deployed or preparing for deployment with the 173rd Airborne, Melzer made contact through O9A channels with an individual he believed was a fellow O9A member with connections to Islamic State operatives. That individual was an undercover FBI operative. Over the course of their communications, Melzer provided detailed information about his unit's personnel strength, planned movements, defensive vulnerabilities, and patrol schedules. The classified material included unit locations, personnel strength, troop movements, defensive capabilities, and satellite imagery. He characterized the planned attack in O9A terms as an Insight Role: a transgressive act generating spiritual advancement through the facilitation of mass death among fellow soldiers.
|
||||
|
||||
The stated purpose of providing this information was to enable ISIS to plan and execute an attack that would kill members of Melzer's platoon. The indictment described the planned operation as a "mascal" (mass casualty) event to be executed by a combination of O9A members and Al-Qaeda-affiliated operatives.[^2]
|
||||
|
||||
### Case Number and Court
|
||||
|
||||
The case was filed in the [[Southern District of New York]] as United States v. Melzer, 1:20-cr-00314-GHW. The presiding judge was [[U.S. District Judge Gregory H. Woods]], an Obama appointee. The prosecution was handled by the SDNY [[National Security Unit]].[^3]
|
||||
|
||||
### Charges in the Superseding Indictment
|
||||
|
||||
The grand jury returned a superseding indictment (S1 20 Cr. 314) on August 18, 2020 charging eight counts. The eight-count structure included: conspiracy to murder U.S. nationals abroad ([[18 U.S.C. § 956]](a)); attempting to murder U.S. service members (18 U.S.C. § 1114); providing and attempting to provide material support to terrorists ([[18 U.S.C. § 2339A]]); and illegal transmission of national defense information (18 U.S.C. § 793(d)). In October 2020, Judge Woods denied Melzer's initial motions, and a trial date was set for July 5, 2022, but Melzer pleaded guilty before trial.[^3]
|
||||
|
||||
The superseding indictment designated two co-conspirators as CC-1 and CC-2. CC-1 was described in court filings as a UK-based O9A contact who communicated with Melzer via Telegram and who relayed Melzer's unit intelligence to CC-2. On May 17, 2020, CC-1 asked Melzer whether he had arrived in Turkey; when Melzer confirmed he was "getting ready to go," CC-1 responded that CC-2 "needs to know, he has plans... inshallah my brother, allahu akbar." No UK co-conspirator was publicly charged in an open-court proceeding as of 2026.[^2]
|
||||
|
||||
### Arrest and Guilty Plea
|
||||
|
||||
Melzer was arrested by the FBI in June 2020 before any attack could occur. Melzer pleaded guilty on June 24, 2022, to three of the eight superseding counts: (1) attempting to murder U.S. service members, in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 1114 and 2; (2) providing and attempting to provide material support to terrorists, in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 2339A and 2; and (3) illegally transmitting national defense information, in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 793(d) and 2. The material support count (§ 2339A) is significant because it did not require the government to designate a foreign terrorist organization as the beneficiary, only to prove Melzer knowingly provided support to someone he knew would use it to prepare or carry out an offense against U.S. nationals.[^1]
|
||||
|
||||
### Sentencing
|
||||
|
||||
Judge Woods sentenced Melzer on March 6, 2023 to 45 years in federal prison, the maximum available on the three counts. At sentencing, Melzer stated he was "a traitor against the United States whose conduct was tantamount to treason." Judge Woods called his crimes "repugnant." The sentence was the heaviest imposed on any AWD or O9A-affiliated defendant. The case was cited by [[Europol]] and the [[CTC West Point]] in subsequent analyses of O9A's documented penetration of military institutions.[^4]
|
||||
|
||||
### Second Circuit Appeal
|
||||
|
||||
Melzer appealed the sentence. The [[U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit]] affirmed the 45-year sentence in a ruling filed in November 2024, docket 23-6247-cr.[^5]
|
||||
|
||||
### Footnotes
|
||||
|
||||
[^1]: U.S. Department of Justice, OPA. Press Release and attached indictment summary, June 2020. https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/us-army-soldier-charged-terrorism-offenses-planning-deadly-ambush-service-members-his; Vice News. "US Soldier Jailed for Satanic Neo-Nazi Plot to Kill Troops in Al Qaeda Attack." 2020. https://www.vice.com/en/article/order-of-nine-angles-neo-nazi-ethan-melzer-arrest/
|
||||
|
||||
[^2]: U.S. Department of Justice, USAO-SDNY. "Former U.S. Army Soldier Sentenced To 45 Years In Prison For Attempting To Murder Fellow Service Members In Deadly Ambush." Press Release, March 2023. https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/former-us-army-soldier-sentenced-45-years-prison-attempting-murder-fellow-service
|
||||
|
||||
[^3]: United States v. Melzer, 1:20-cr-00314-GHW (S.D.N.Y.). Superseding indictment S1 20 Cr. 314, returned August 18, 2020. CourtListener docket: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/17286246/united-states-v-melzer/
|
||||
|
||||
[^4]: ABC News. "US Soldier Ethan Melzer, Described as 'the Enemy Within,' Sentenced for Jihadist Plot." March 3, 2023. https://abcnews.go.com/US/us-soldier-ethan-melzer-enemy-sentenced-jihadist-plot/story?id=97616439; CTC West Point. "The Iron March Forum and the Evolution of the 'Skull Mask' Neo-Fascist Network." https://ctc.westpoint.edu/the-iron-march-forum-and-the-evolution-of-the-skull-mask-neo-fascist-network/
|
||||
|
||||
[^5]: United States v. Melzer, No. 23-6247-cr (2d Cir. 2024). Courthouse News: https://www.courthousenews.com/circuit-upholds-45-year-sentence-for-army-soldier-who-plotted-satanic-neo-nazi-ambush/
|
||||
44
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/James Mason.md
Normal file
44
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/James Mason.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,44 @@
|
|||
---
|
||||
category: "Extremism & Violent Networks"
|
||||
tags:
|
||||
- Person
|
||||
- NeoNazi
|
||||
- SiegeCulture
|
||||
- Accelerationism
|
||||
- NSLF
|
||||
- AtomwaffenDivision
|
||||
- USA
|
||||
created: 2026-05-21
|
||||
updated: 2026-05-21
|
||||
summary: "James Mason is an American neo-Nazi ideologue whose collected essays Siege (1992) became the foundational accelerationist text for Atomwaffen Division and the broader 'siege culture' movement after being rediscovered and popularized on the Iron March forum in 2015."
|
||||
born: 1952
|
||||
location: "United States"
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
[[James Mason]] is an American neo-Nazi ideologue whose collected newsletter essays, published as *[[Siege]]* in 1992, became the foundational accelerationist text for [[Atomwaffen Division]] and the wider "[[Siege Culture|siege culture]]" movement after lying largely dormant for two decades before being rediscovered and popularized on the [[Iron March]] neo-fascist forum in 2015. Mason's writings explicitly advocate lone-wolf terrorism and argue that the collapse of liberal democratic society can be accelerated through cascading acts of political violence.
|
||||
|
||||
### Background and NSLF
|
||||
|
||||
Mason served as a leader of the [[National Socialist Liberation Front]] (NSLF), which had its roots in a 1970s periodical created by [[Joseph Tommasi]]. From 1980 to 1986, Mason wrote a newsletter for the NSLF that he called *Siege*, producing essays that collectively developed an avowedly accelerationist position: that existing democratic institutions are too corrupt to be reformed and must be destroyed through terrorism, that lone-wolf attacks are preferable to group action because they are harder to infiltrate and prosecute, and that the strategic goal is to escalate societal tensions until a race war becomes unavoidable.[^1]
|
||||
|
||||
### The 1992 Book
|
||||
|
||||
After years of failed attempts to find a publisher, [[Michael J. Moynihan]] formed the Storm Books imprint and published Mason's collected NSLF newsletter essays as *Siege: The Collected Writings of James Mason* in 1992. Prominent white supremacist [[Tom Metzger]] praised and distributed the book, but the mainstream neo-Nazi movement of the time largely ignored or criticized it. For roughly two decades, *Siege* remained a marginal text within the far right.[^2]
|
||||
|
||||
### Iron March Rediscovery and AWD
|
||||
|
||||
The book's second life began in 2015, when [[Iron March]] members began promoting it aggressively. The forum's global neo-Nazi and neo-fascist membership proved receptive in ways that the American white nationalist movement of the 1990s had not been. [[Brandon Russell]] announced [[Atomwaffen Division]] on Iron March in October 2015, and the new organization adopted *Siege* as its ideological foundation. AWD's activities, aesthetics, and strategic orientation all drew directly on Mason's writings.[^2]
|
||||
|
||||
Mason was personally drawn into the AWD orbit. He attended the [[2019 AWD Nuclear Congress]] in Las Vegas, AWD's internal leadership gathering organized by [[Joshua Caleb Sutter]] of [[Tempel ov Blood]], delivering speeches calling for murder and lone-wolf attacks and making his first documented in-person appearance with the organization.[^3]
|
||||
|
||||
### Documented Influence
|
||||
|
||||
An early study of *Siege*'s influence across the post-2015 extremist landscape identified 33 extremist entities with documented ties to the book, nine of which had been involved in acts of violence, four in specific murders, and four in threats or acts of terrorism. [[Europol]] noted in 2021 that "*Siege* and Accelerationism, both with significant potential for inciting violence, were the most prominent ideologies in 2021, especially attracting young people radicalised online."[^1]
|
||||
|
||||
The direct citation of *Siege* by [[Cain Clark]] in his manifesto for the [[2026 Islamic Center of San Diego Shooting]] represents one of the most recent documented instances of the text's continued operational influence more than three decades after its initial publication.
|
||||
|
||||
### Footnotes
|
||||
|
||||
[^1]: ICCT. "Siege Culture After Siege: Anatomy of a Neo-Nazi Terrorist Doctrine." https://icct.nl/sites/default/files/2022-12/siege-culture-neo-nazi-terrorist-doctrine.pdf
|
||||
[^2]: SPLC. "James Mason." Extremist Files. https://www.splcenter.org/resources/extremist-files/james-mason/
|
||||
[^3]: Rolling Stone. "The Satanist Neo-Nazi Plot to Murder U.S. Soldiers." 2021. https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/the-satanist-neo-nazi-plot-to-murder-u-s-soldiers-1352629/
|
||||
39
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Jeremy Meilhac.md
Normal file
39
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Jeremy Meilhac.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,39 @@
|
|||
---
|
||||
category: "Extremism & Violent Networks"
|
||||
tags:
|
||||
- Person
|
||||
- TerrorgramCollective
|
||||
- NeoNazi
|
||||
- Accelerationism
|
||||
- Denmark
|
||||
- France
|
||||
- TerroristConviction
|
||||
- International
|
||||
created: 2026-05-22
|
||||
updated: 2026-05-22
|
||||
born: 1995
|
||||
location: "Copenhagen area, Denmark"
|
||||
summary: "Jeremy Meilhac is a French national raised in Denmark who was sentenced to six years in prison by a Danish court in April 2026 for terrorism-related offenses as a Terrorgram Collective member, becoming the first person convicted of Terrorgram-linked terrorism in Denmark, with his Danish citizenship revoked and deportation ordered."
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
Jeremy Meilhac (born approximately 1995/1996, French national, raised in Denmark from age two) was a core [[Terrorgram Collective]] member sentenced to six years in prison by the [[Glostrup District Court]] ([[Denmark]]) on approximately April 21, 2026 for terrorism-related offenses under Danish law, becoming the first Terrorgram conviction in Denmark and the first time a Danish court formally labeled Terrorgram a terrorist organization.[^1] He was also stripped of his Danish citizenship and ordered expelled from Denmark following the sentence, the first such citizenship revocation in a Danish terrorism proceeding connected to the Terrorgram network. The verdict has been appealed to the [[Danish High Court]].[^2]
|
||||
|
||||
### Terrorgram Activities
|
||||
|
||||
Meilhac operated multiple profiles on [[Telegram]] that [[Europol]]'s [[European Counter Terrorism Centre]] (ECTC) identified as among the most influential within the Terrorgram network. His activities during the indictment period (approximately June 2023 to December 2024) included producing and disseminating far-right extremist propaganda in Terrorgram's channels; collaborating directly with [[Dallas Humber]], the Terrorgram inner collective's U.S.-based co-leader, to produce "saint cards" (the trading-card-format graphics profiling far-right mass shooters with death tolls, methods, and attack dates, framing them as martyrs); sharing audio recordings of attackers' manifestos through the network's channels; and glorifying terrorism in content distributed to a transnational audience.[^1][^2]
|
||||
|
||||
Europol identified him as playing a "central and active role" in the network's operations, distinguishing him from peripheral channel participants. The case originated approximately three years before the 2026 conviction, when a journalist reported Meilhac to Danish police for threats. A [[Danish Broadcasting Corporation|Danish Radio]] (DR) podcast called "Lyssky" documented his case in an episode titled "Terrorgrams danske stemme" ("Terrorgram's Danish voice").[^3]
|
||||
|
||||
### Prosecution and Conviction
|
||||
|
||||
The [[Public Prosecution Service of Denmark]] charged Meilhac with terrorism-related offenses under the Danish Penal Code. The trial took place in Glostrup District Court; the date of the verdict was approximately April 21, 2026. The court found that Terrorgram qualified as a terrorist organization under Danish law, the first such finding in Denmark.
|
||||
|
||||
The sentence of six years was accompanied by an order for subsequent deportation and the revocation of Meilhac's Danish citizenship. He was born in [[France]] but had lived in Denmark from approximately age two; the citizenship revocation required a judicial determination that he retained French citizenship, preventing him from becoming stateless.[^2]
|
||||
|
||||
Europol described the conviction as further dismantling the Terrorgram network's international infrastructure, noting in a press release dated May 1, 2026 that it followed the December 2025 Canadian conviction of [[Matthew Althorpe]] (20 years) and the earlier 2025 U.S. conviction of Dallas Humber (30 years).[^1]
|
||||
|
||||
### Footnotes
|
||||
|
||||
[^1]: Europol, European Counter Terrorism Centre. "'Terrorgram' network dealt another blow as member sentenced in Denmark." May 1, 2026. https://www.europol.europa.eu/media-press/newsroom/news/terrorgram-network-dealt-another-blow-member-sentenced-in-denmark; Maryland Coordination and Analysis Center (MCAC) republication of Europol press release. May 2026. https://mcac.maryland.gov/2026/05/terrorgram-network-dealt-another-blow-as-member-sentenced-in-denmark/
|
||||
[^2]: The Local (Denmark). "Denmark jails man and revokes citizenship for promoting terror on social media." April 21, 2026. https://www.thelocal.dk/20260421/denmark-jails-man-and-revokes-citizenship-for-promoting-terror-on-social-media; The Copenhagen Post. "Dane had extensive contact with terror network leader." April 21, 2026. https://cphpost.dk/2026-04-21/global/dane-had-extensive-contact-with-terror-network-leader/
|
||||
[^3]: DR (Danish Broadcasting Corporation). "Lyssky" podcast, episode: "Terrorgrams danske stemme." https://www.dr.dk/lyd/special-radio/lyssky/lyssky-3/terrorgrams-danske-stemme-11802665016; Tracking Terrorism (TRAC). "Jeremy Meilhac, Terrorgram Collective, Glostrup, Denmark." https://trackingterrorism.org/chatter/jeremy-meilhac-terrorgram-collective-glostrup-denmark-trac/
|
||||
25
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Jillian Hoy.md
Normal file
25
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Jillian Hoy.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,25 @@
|
|||
---
|
||||
category: "Extremism & Violent Networks"
|
||||
tags:
|
||||
- Person
|
||||
- MartinetPress
|
||||
- O9A
|
||||
- TemplovBlood
|
||||
- NeoNazi
|
||||
- SouthCarolina
|
||||
- USA
|
||||
created: 2026-05-21
|
||||
updated: 2026-05-21
|
||||
summary: "Jillian Hoy is the co-director of Martinet Press and domestic partner of Joshua Caleb Sutter, co-operating the Lexington, South Carolina O9A publishing house that produced Iron Gates and other texts that became required reading in Atomwaffen Division."
|
||||
location: "Lexington, South Carolina"
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
[[Jillian Hoy]] co-directs [[Martinet Press]] alongside [[Joshua Caleb Sutter]] and is Sutter's domestic partner. The pair operated the press from [[Lexington, South Carolina]] as the primary publishing arm of [[Tempel ov Blood]] and the American [[Order of Nine Angles|O9A]] network. Martinet Press published [[Iron Gates]] (2014), *Liber 333*, *Bluebird*, and related O9A texts that became required and recommended reading within [[Atomwaffen Division]] following Sutter's 2017 infiltration of that organization.
|
||||
|
||||
Hoy's individual public profile is limited in available reporting: she is identified as co-director in Martinet Press materials and in accounts of Sutter's activities, but investigative journalism and court documents have focused primarily on Sutter's dual role as FBI informant and O9A publisher. The extent of her awareness of Sutter's FBI arrangement and the full scope of her role in press operations have not been resolved in public sources.
|
||||
|
||||
The [[FBI]] paid Sutter more than $140,000 as an informant, including funds directed specifically at facilitating his infiltration of AWD. The timing and funding of Martinet Press publications relative to those informant payments - some publications appear to have been produced during periods when Sutter was actively receiving federal payments - remains one of the most extensively documented anomalies in the federal government's handling of the AWD monitoring operation.[^1]
|
||||
|
||||
### Footnotes
|
||||
|
||||
[^1]: Bellingcat. "How Atomwaffen Became A Neo-Nazi Terror Group." https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2018/11/19/how-atomwaffen-division-became-a-neo-nazi-terror-group/; Frontline / ProPublica. "A Neo-Nazi Terrorist Is Paid Over $140,000 by the FBI — and That Might Just Be the Start." https://www.propublica.org/article/a-neo-nazi-terrorist-is-paid-over-140000-by-the-fbi-and-that-might-just-be-the-start
|
||||
43
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Juraj Krajčík.md
Normal file
43
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Juraj Krajčík.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,43 @@
|
|||
---
|
||||
category: "Extremism & Violent Networks"
|
||||
tags:
|
||||
- Person
|
||||
- TerrorgramCollective
|
||||
- NeoNazi
|
||||
- Accelerationism
|
||||
- AntiLGBT
|
||||
- Slovakia
|
||||
- MassShooter
|
||||
created: 2026-05-21
|
||||
updated: 2026-05-21
|
||||
summary: "Juraj Krajčík was a Slovak neo-Nazi who attacked the Tepláreň LGBTQ+ bar in Bratislava in October 2022, killing two, after Terrorgram Collective mentorship by Pavol Beňadik from age 16, becoming Terrorgram's first designated saint."
|
||||
born: 2003
|
||||
died: 2022-10-12
|
||||
location: "Bratislava, Slovakia"
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
[[Juraj Krajčík]] (approximately 2003 - October 12, 2022) was a 19-year-old Slovak who attacked the [[Tepláreň]] LGBTQ+ bar in [[Bratislava]] on October 12, 2022, shooting three people and killing two before taking his own life. He had been radicalized through [[Terrorgram Collective]] channels from approximately age 16 (August 2019 onward), under the direct mentorship of Terrorgram co-founder [[Pavol Beňadik]] ("Slovakbro"), who had called publicly in his channels for "saints" to emerge from Slovakia. The Bratislava attack was identified within the Terrorgram community and subsequently by researchers as the network's first attributed "saint" event - a milestone in Terrorgram's radicalization pipeline becoming operational.[^1]
|
||||
|
||||
### Radicalization
|
||||
|
||||
Krajčík joined Beňadik's Terrorgram channels in approximately August 2019 at age 15 or 16, during the period when the post-[[Brenton Tarrant|Christchurch]] accelerationist ecosystem was migrating to [[Telegram]]. Over the following three years, Beňadik directly mentored him through the network's radicalization content - the [[Saints Culture]] framework, accelerationist neo-Nazi ideology, and Terrorgram's three major publications. Beňadik's channels explicitly called for "saints" from Slovakia, framing aspiring attackers as participants in a sacred tradition whose most recent exemplar was Tarrant.
|
||||
|
||||
Krajčík cited Beňadik by his alias "Slovakbro" in the manifesto he left before the attack, naming him as a direct influence and mentor. He also identified Payton Gendron (the May 2022 Buffalo supermarket shooter who killed ten Black people) as his "final nudge," indicating the Buffalo attack served as his immediate operational trigger.[^2]
|
||||
|
||||
Beňadik had been arrested by Slovak authorities in May 2022, five months before the Bratislava attack. Following Beňadik's arrest, [[Dallas Humber]] became Krajčík's primary Terrorgram contact. The arrest came too late to interrupt the radicalization Beňadik had already set in motion. Krajčík proceeded with the attack based on years of prior mentorship.
|
||||
|
||||
### The Attack
|
||||
|
||||
On the evening of October 12, 2022, Krajčík drove to Tepláreň, a bar in the Old Town district of Bratislava popular with the city's LGBTQ+ community. He opened fire on the bar's exterior area and entrance, killing [[Matúš Horváth]] and [[Juraj Vankulič]] (Vankulič was non-binary) and wounding [[Radka Trokšiarová]]. He then fled. The following morning, he died by suicide in a Bratislava park. Slovak police recovered his body and his manifesto, a 65-page document written in English that detailed his Terrorgram radicalization, his admiration for Tarrant and Gendron, and his explicit framing of the attack as a contribution to the "saint" tradition.[^1]
|
||||
|
||||
The Bratislava attack was the first mass-casualty event directly attributed to Terrorgram's mentorship infrastructure. Within Terrorgram channels, [[Dallas Humber]] designated Krajčík as "St. Juraj Krajčík, Tarrant's sixth disciple and Terrorgram's first saint," elevating him to saint status in the Saints Culture format and circulating his attack as promotional material to inspire subsequent attackers.
|
||||
|
||||
### Prosecution Record
|
||||
|
||||
Because Krajčík died at the scene by self-inflicted gunshot, he faced no prosecution. The attack's consequences fell on Beňadik, who had been arrested before the attack but whose channels had provided the years of radicalization Krajčík drew on. Slovak prosecutors cited the Bratislava attack explicitly in Beňadik's trial. In Canadian sentencing proceedings for co-founder [[Matthew Althorpe]], Justice Jane Kelly listed the Bratislava attack as one of six that Althorpe's publications had inspired, tying Terrorgram's content directly to Krajčík's violence through the network Althorpe helped build.[^3]
|
||||
|
||||
### Footnotes
|
||||
|
||||
[^1]: RSIS. "Bratislava Shooting: The Making of Terrorgram's First Saint." https://rsis.edu.sg/rsis-publication/rsis/bratislava-shooting-the-making-of-terrorgrams-first-saint/
|
||||
[^2]: ProPublica. "Telegram, Terrorgram Collective, Bratislava Murders." https://www.propublica.org/article/telegram-terrorgram-collective-bratislava-murders-neo-nazi-online-hate
|
||||
[^3]: Public Prosecution Service of Canada. "PPSC Sentencing Announcement, Matthew Althorpe." March 27, 2026. https://www.ppsc.gc.ca/eng/nws-nvs/2026/27_03_26.html
|
||||
47
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Kaleb Merritt.md
Normal file
47
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Kaleb Merritt.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,47 @@
|
|||
---
|
||||
category: "Extremism & Violent Networks"
|
||||
tags:
|
||||
- Person
|
||||
- CVLT
|
||||
- ChildExploitation
|
||||
- CSAM
|
||||
- ChildExploitationEnterprise
|
||||
- Texas
|
||||
- Virginia
|
||||
- OrderOfNineAngles
|
||||
- FederalCase
|
||||
born: 2000
|
||||
location: "Spring, Texas"
|
||||
created: 2026-05-21
|
||||
updated: 2026-05-22
|
||||
summary: "Kaleb Christopher Merritt, alias 'eTerror', was a CVLT leader already serving 33 years in Virginia for abducting and raping minors when he pleaded guilty on March 26, 2026 to engaging in a child exploitation enterprise in the federal CVLT prosecution."
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
[[Kaleb Merritt]] (full name Kaleb Christopher Merritt, aliases "eTerror," "o9a.evil," and "o9a") is a member of [[CVLT]] and the broader [[764 Network|764]] ecosystem, operating out of [[Spring, Texas]]. At the time of his federal indictment he was already incarcerated at [[Pocahontas State Correctional Center]] in Tazewell County, Virginia, serving a 33-year state sentence for the 2020-2021 abduction and rape of multiple minors in [[Henry County, Virginia]]. He pleaded guilty on March 26, 2026 to engaging in a child exploitation enterprise under federal law.[^1]
|
||||
|
||||
### Virginia State Conviction
|
||||
|
||||
Merritt targeted a 12-year-old girl in Henry County, Virginia, whom he initially contacted through Instagram and [[Discord]]. He traveled from Texas and eventually abducted her. An Amber Alert was issued when the two were reported missing, and approximately 36 hours later they were located near [[Raleigh, North Carolina]]. He was subsequently charged by a Henry County grand jury with: rape of a child less than 13 years of age, two counts of rape, two counts of producing child pornography with a victim under 15 (second or subsequent offense), one additional count of producing child pornography with a victim under 15, abduction with intent to defile, and solicitation of a child less than 15 for sex by computer.
|
||||
|
||||
On March 8, 2022, Merritt appeared in [[Henry County Circuit Court]] and pleaded guilty to all charges; he was sentenced the same day to 33 years in active incarceration plus lifetime probation upon release. He was transferred to Pocahontas State Correctional Center in Tazewell County.[^2]
|
||||
|
||||
The Merritt Virginia case predates his full CVLT leadership activity but overlaps with the CVLT enterprise period (at least 2019 to 2022). The federal indictment alleged that Merritt also victimized four additional children beyond those in the Virginia case, as part of his CVLT activities.[^3]
|
||||
|
||||
### O9A Ideology
|
||||
|
||||
Merritt adopted aliases that incorporated [[Order of Nine Angles|O9A]] identity, using "eTerror/o9a.evil" across platforms. CVLT's early leadership cohort, including co-leader [[Collin Walker]] (alias "WRATH/O9A.WRATH"), integrated O9A-aligned neo-Nazi occultism alongside nihilism and pedophilia as core ideological elements. Instagram screenshots from the account "o9a.evil" have been identified by researchers as potentially belonging to Merritt.[^4]
|
||||
|
||||
### Federal Case (United States v. Rane, 2:25-cr-00040)
|
||||
|
||||
The grand jury returned the CVLT indictment on January 17, 2025 in the [[Central District of California]]. The indictment was unsealed approximately February 4-5, 2025. Merritt faced one count of engaging in a child exploitation enterprise under [[18 U.S.C. § 2252A(g)]]. Because he was incarcerated in Virginia at the time of indictment, he was transported to federal custody in Los Angeles.
|
||||
|
||||
Merritt, [[Rohan Rane]], and Walker were identified as the enterprise's leaders and administrators. All three hosted and ran CVLT servers, controlled membership, and directed victims during the creation of CSAM and coercion videos. [[Clint Borge]] was charged as a member who participated in and directed coercion sessions.[^3]
|
||||
|
||||
Merritt pleaded guilty on March 26, 2026. United States District Judge [[Hernan D. Vera]] of the Central District of California scheduled Merritt's sentencing for January 7, 2027. At sentencing Merritt faces a mandatory minimum of 20 years in federal prison and a maximum of life imprisonment. Any federal sentence would run consecutively to or concurrently with his existing 33-year Virginia sentence, as determined by the sentencing court.[^1]
|
||||
|
||||
### Footnotes
|
||||
|
||||
[^1]: U.S. Department of Justice, OPA. "Man Pleads Guilty to Participating in Online Neo-Nazi Group that Exploited Children into Producing Child Sexual Abuse Material." March 2026. https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/man-pleads-guilty-participating-online-neo-nazi-group-exploited-children-producing-child; MCAC. "Man Pleads Guilty..." March 2026. https://mcac.maryland.gov/2026/03/man-pleads-guilty-to-participating-in-online-neo-nazi-group-that-exploited-children-into-producing-child-sexual-abuse-material/
|
||||
[^2]: Martinsville Bulletin. "Texas man sentenced in rape of Bassett girl." June 2022. https://martinsvillebulletin.com/news/local/article_837f0318-edab-11ec-a76d-cb37b59e40a7.html; VPM News. "Kaleb Merritt accused of being CVLT leadership, part of child sex abuse group." February 7, 2025. https://www.vpm.org/news/2025-02-07/kaleb-merrit-cvlt-henry-county-neofascist-indicted-child-sex-abuse; Virginia State Police Sex Offender Registry, Offender ee24c0fd. https://www.vspsor.com/Offender/Details/ee24c0fd-8264-48ae-89c9-33231363dca2
|
||||
[^3]: HSI press release. February 2025. https://www.ice.gov/news/releases/hsi-los-angeles-cherry-hill-and-honolulu-special-agents-arrest-members-online-neo
|
||||
[^4]: Medium/chokingonsignal. "Com, Extortion Groups, and the Order of Nine Angles." https://chokingonsignal.medium.com/com-extortion-groups-and-the-order-of-nine-angles-9fe1f8419526
|
||||
35
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Luke Hunter.md
Normal file
35
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Luke Hunter.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,35 @@
|
|||
---
|
||||
category: "Extremism & Violent Networks"
|
||||
tags:
|
||||
- Person
|
||||
- FeuerkriegDivision
|
||||
- NeoNazi
|
||||
- Accelerationism
|
||||
- UK
|
||||
- TerroristConviction
|
||||
- UKTerrorism
|
||||
born: 1997
|
||||
location: "Newcastle upon Tyne, England"
|
||||
created: 2026-05-22
|
||||
updated: 2026-05-22
|
||||
summary: "Luke Hunter was a Newcastle propagandist affiliated with Feuerkrieg Division who ran a Telegram channel with over 1,200 subscribers, was convicted of seven terrorism charges in 2020, and sentenced to four years and two months at Leeds Crown Court."
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
Luke Hunter, 23, of [[Newcastle upon Tyne]], was convicted of seven terrorism offences and sentenced to four years and two months at [[Leeds Crown Court]] on 23 December 2020. Hunter operated a [[Telegram]] channel with over 1,200 subscribers and created a white supremacist propaganda website that disseminated material in affiliation with [[Feuerkrieg Division]], including calls for the extermination of Jewish and LGBTQ people.[^1]
|
||||
|
||||
### Propaganda Operation
|
||||
|
||||
Hunter's Telegram channel distributed terrorist handbooks, instructional material on surveillance, guerrilla warfare, weapons, and explosives, and extreme-right video content. He also ran a separate website through which he circulated white supremacist texts, anti-Semitic and homophobic material, and content promoting political violence. A search of his home at arrest found extensive Hitler and neo-Nazi materials, military training manuals, and surveillance guides.[^1]
|
||||
|
||||
His affiliation with FKD was primarily propagandistic rather than operational: he produced video content and encouraged support for FKD through his platforms. He was not charged with providing direct attack planning advice in the manner of [[Paul Dunleavy]], but the volume and character of his output resulted in seven separate charges. The charges covered encouragement of terrorism, dissemination of terrorist publications, and broadcasting violent material, each addressed separately in the indictment.[^2]
|
||||
|
||||
### Arrest and Charges
|
||||
|
||||
Hunter was arrested in October 2019 as part of the broader counter-terrorism policing investigation of FKD that also led to the Cornwall teenager's arrest in July 2019. The Hope Not Hate investigation that profiled Hunter documented his activity as stretching across platforms including Telegram, his own website, and other online forums.[^1]
|
||||
|
||||
He admitted all seven charges, making the Leeds Crown Court hearing a sentencing proceeding rather than a trial. No terrorism enhancement was applied beyond the basic terrorism offences charged; the four-year-two-month sentence was consistent with the UK sentencing guidelines for this category of offences at the time.
|
||||
|
||||
### Footnotes
|
||||
|
||||
[^1]: Hope Not Hate. "LUKE HUNTER: profile of a Nazi terror propagandist." December 23, 2020. https://hopenothate.org.uk/2020/12/23/luke-hunter-profile-of-a-nazi-terror-propagandist/; Algemeiner. "British Neo-Nazi Who Called for 'Eradication' of Jews Sentenced to 4-Year Jail Term." December 24, 2020. https://www.algemeiner.com/2020/12/24/british-neo-nazi-who-called-for-eradication-of-jews-sentenced-to-4-year-jail-term/
|
||||
[^2]: Campaign Against Antisemitism. "Neo-Nazi with history of disseminating antisemitic material sentenced to four years in prison after admitting terrorist charges." December 2020. https://antisemitism.org/neo-nazi-with-history-of-disseminating-antisemitic-material-sentenced-to-four-years-in-prison-after-admitting-terrorist-charges
|
||||
37
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Noah Lamb.md
Normal file
37
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Noah Lamb.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,37 @@
|
|||
---
|
||||
category: "Extremism & Violent Networks"
|
||||
tags:
|
||||
- Person
|
||||
- TerrorgramCollective
|
||||
- NeoNazi
|
||||
- FederalCase
|
||||
- California
|
||||
- USA
|
||||
- Doxing
|
||||
created: 2026-05-21
|
||||
updated: 2026-05-22
|
||||
summary: "Noah Lamb is a Terrorgram Collective member indicted June 26, 2025 in the Eastern District of California for assembling 'The List,' a dossier-style hit list targeting U.S. senators, federal judges, a former attorney general, business leaders, journalists, and activists, facing 85 years across eight federal counts with no plea or trial outcome as of May 2026."
|
||||
born: 2001
|
||||
location: "Eastern District of California"
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
[[Noah Lamb]] (born approximately 2001, age 24 at indictment) was charged in the [[Eastern District of California]] in an eight-count indictment filed June 26, 2025 and unsealed July 2, 2025 for his documented role in assembling the [[Terrorgram Collective]]'s "The List," a dossier-style compilation of assassination targets distributed through the network's [[Telegram]] channels. He faces a maximum combined sentence of 85 years in federal prison. The investigation was conducted by the [[FBI Sacramento Field Office]] and prosecuted by the [[U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of California]].[^1]
|
||||
|
||||
### "The List": Production and Targets
|
||||
|
||||
The List was a Terrorgram Collective publication presenting designated assassination targets in a standardized dossier format. Each entry included the target's name, home address, a photograph of the individual, a photograph of their home, and a statement characterizing them as an enemy of white nationalist ideology based on their race, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, or gender identity.
|
||||
|
||||
Targets identified in the indictment included a U.S. senator described as "an Anti-White, Anti-gun, Jewish Senator"; a U.S. district court judge described as "an invader from a foreign country" with a citation to an immigration-related ruling; and a former U.S. attorney general. Business leaders, journalists, and activist figures were also included alongside elected officials and federal judges.[^1][^2]
|
||||
|
||||
Lamb's documented role was identifying prospective targets and obtaining their home addresses and personal information, which other Terrorgram members then formatted into the trading-card dossier and disseminated through the network's channels. The List publication was conceptually parallel to the [[Saints Culture]] trading-card format that celebrated past perpetrators of violence, but was prospective: it designated living individuals for future attack rather than commemorating past ones.
|
||||
|
||||
### Charges and Legal Status
|
||||
|
||||
The eight-count indictment charged Lamb with: one count of conspiracy; three counts of soliciting the murder of federal officials (18 U.S.C. § 373 in conjunction with 18 U.S.C. § 1114); three counts of doxing federal officials (publishing private personal information with intent to threaten); and one count of interstate threatening communication. Maximum cumulative exposure across all counts is 85 years in federal prison.
|
||||
|
||||
No guilty plea or trial outcome was publicly reported as of May 2026. The case was the third Terrorgram-related prosecution filed in the Eastern District of California, following the September 2024 [[United States v. Humber|Humber-Allison indictment]] (2:24-cr-00257). Lamb's case was filed approximately ten months after the primary Humber-Allison indictment and approximately one month before [[Dallas Humber]]'s August 8, 2025 guilty plea.[^1]
|
||||
|
||||
### Footnotes
|
||||
|
||||
[^1]: U.S. Department of Justice, OPA. "Member of Transnational Terrorist Group Charged with Soliciting the Murder of Federal Officials in Connection with Hit List." July 2, 2025. https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/member-transnational-terrorist-group-charged-soliciting-murder-federal-officials-connection; U.S. Attorney's Office, Eastern District of California. "Member of Transnational Terrorist Group Charged with Soliciting the Murder of Federal Officials." July 2, 2025. https://www.justice.gov/usao-edca/pr/member-transnational-terrorist-group-charged-soliciting-murder-federal-officials
|
||||
[^2]: NBC News. "Member of white supremacist group charged in alleged plot to solicit murder of 'high-value targets.'" July 2, 2025. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/member-white-supremacy-group-charged-alleged-plot-solicit-murder-high-rcna216701; Ali Winston (@awinston) on X, July 2, 2025. https://x.com/awinston/status/1940486731821994306
|
||||
36
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Noah Licul.md
Normal file
36
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Noah Licul.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,36 @@
|
|||
---
|
||||
category: "Extremism & Violent Networks"
|
||||
tags:
|
||||
- Person
|
||||
- TerrorgramCollective
|
||||
- FeuerkriegDivision
|
||||
- NeoNazi
|
||||
- Accelerationism
|
||||
- Croatia
|
||||
- SDGT
|
||||
- TerroristDesignation
|
||||
summary: "Noah Licul is a Croatian Terrorgram Collective senior member designated a Specially Designated Global Terrorist by the U.S. State Department on January 13, 2025, who was previously identified in Feuerkrieg Division-linked Telegram chats circa 2019-2020 under the alias 'buntovnik.'"
|
||||
created: 2026-05-22
|
||||
updated: 2026-05-22
|
||||
location: "Croatia"
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
[[Noah Licul]] is a Croatian national and senior member of the [[Terrorgram Collective]] who was designated a [[Specially Designated Global Terrorist]] (SDGT) by the [[U.S. Department of State]] on January 13, 2025, under [[Executive Order 13224]], as part of the joint designation of Terrorgram Collective and three of its leaders. The Federal Register published the designation as part of 90 FR 3987 on January 15, 2025.[^1]
|
||||
|
||||
Licul is documented in public antifascist research as having been active, then as a teenager, in [[Telegram]] chats associated with [[Feuerkrieg Division]] in 2019 and 2020, under the username "buntovnik" (Serbo-Croatian for "rebel"). In those chats, he described meeting with members of an FKD cell in Croatia and claimed credit for vandalizing a [[World War II]] memorial with neo-Nazi graffiti. His presence in FKD-affiliated chats in 2019-2020 and subsequent elevation to senior Terrorgram member status documents one of the clearest individual-level data points for the personnel continuity between the FKD-era and Terrorgram-era accelerationist networks.
|
||||
|
||||
### SDGT Designation
|
||||
|
||||
The January 13, 2025, designation named Licul alongside [[Ciro Daniel Amorim Ferreira]] (Brazil) and [[Hendrik-Wahl Muller]] (South Africa) as the three individual leaders designated alongside the Terrorgram Collective organization itself. The State Department described Licul as "a senior member of Terrorgram" residing in Croatia. The designation freezes any U.S.-jurisdictional assets, prohibits U.S. persons from conducting transactions with him, and was coordinated with the [[Office of Foreign Assets Control]] (OFAC) action of the same date.[^2]
|
||||
|
||||
As of May 2026, no criminal charges had been filed against Licul in Croatia or by any other jurisdiction in open-source records.
|
||||
|
||||
### FKD Connection: Documented Link
|
||||
|
||||
The identification of Licul as an FKD-adjacent actor in 2019-2020 and as a senior Terrorgram member by 2024-2025 provides an empirically documented instance of personnel migration from [[Feuerkrieg Division]]'s network to the Terrorgram ecosystem. The [[Middlebury Institute CTEC]] and [[Tech Against Terrorism]] documented FKD's active role in building the [[United Acceleration Front]] and [[National Socialist Coalition]] coalition structures on Telegram in early 2021 as organizational bridges; Licul's individual trajectory suggests the personnel overlap was direct as well as structural.[^3]
|
||||
|
||||
### Footnotes
|
||||
|
||||
[^1]: U.S. Department of State. "Terrorist Designations of The Terrorgram Collective and Three Leaders." January 13, 2025. https://2021-2025.state.gov/office-of-the-spokesperson/releases/2025/01/terrorist-designations-of-the-terrorgram-collective-and-three-leaders/; Federal Register. 90 FR 3987. January 15, 2025. https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/01/15/2025-00756/
|
||||
[^2]: OFAC. "Counter Terrorism Designations; Venezuela-related and Counter Narcotics Designation Removals." January 13, 2025. https://ofac.treasury.gov/recent-actions/20250113
|
||||
[^3]: Posts from Underground. "'Don't let them find you': The U.S. Comes for Terrorgram." 2025. https://postsfromunderground.ghost.io/the-choice-is-yours-white-man-th/
|
||||
41
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Patrick Gordon MacDonald.md
Normal file
41
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Patrick Gordon MacDonald.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,41 @@
|
|||
---
|
||||
category: "Extremism & Violent Networks"
|
||||
tags:
|
||||
- Person
|
||||
- AtomwaffenDivision
|
||||
- NeoNazi
|
||||
- Accelerationism
|
||||
- Canada
|
||||
- Ontario
|
||||
- TerroristConviction
|
||||
- TerrorPropaganda
|
||||
summary: "Patrick Gordon MacDonald is an Ottawa, Ontario man who, under the alias 'Dark Foreigner,' produced and distributed Atomwaffen Division recruitment videos in 2018-2019, was convicted of all terrorism charges by Ontario Superior Court in April 2025, and was sentenced to 10 years in prison in September 2025."
|
||||
created: 2026-05-22
|
||||
updated: 2026-05-22
|
||||
location: "Ottawa, Ontario, Canada"
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
[[Patrick Gordon MacDonald]] (alias "Dark Foreigner," Ottawa, [[Ontario]]) was convicted in April 2025 by Ontario Superior Court Justice [[Robert Smith]] of three terrorism-related charges arising from his production and distribution of [[Atomwaffen Division]] recruitment propaganda in 2018 and 2019. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison on September 8, 2025, by [[Public Prosecution Service of Canada]] prosecutors based in Montreal.[^1]
|
||||
|
||||
MacDonald is distinct from [[Kristopher Erik Nippak]] and [[Matthew Althorpe]], whose separate prosecution covers [[Terrorgram Collective]] content; the MacDonald case is rooted in the earlier AWD propaganda period but represents part of the same Canadian prosecution wave targeting the AWD-to-Terrorgram accelerationist lineage.
|
||||
|
||||
### Charges and Conviction
|
||||
|
||||
The three charges of which MacDonald was convicted: participating in terrorist activity; facilitating terrorist activity; and inciting hate against Jews for one or more terrorist entities, including Atomwaffen Division and materials associated with [[James Mason]].
|
||||
|
||||
The offenses occurred in 2018 and 2019, when MacDonald was 20 and 21 years old, across Ottawa, Belleville, Ontario, and Saint-Ferdinand, Quebec. He participated in the creation and editing of three AWD recruitment videos encouraging viewers to commit violent acts on behalf of AWD and posted them along with other violent imagery online as AWD propaganda. He also provided his own camera and lenses for filming the videos, thereby facilitating their production.
|
||||
|
||||
Under his "Dark Foreigner" alias, MacDonald disseminated propaganda across multiple social platforms. He concealed his account passwords and usernames above ceiling tiles in his residence to avoid detection.
|
||||
|
||||
His trial began in November 2024. Justice Smith found him guilty on all three counts in April 2025.
|
||||
|
||||
### Prosecution and Sentence
|
||||
|
||||
Federal Crown prosecutors based in Montreal argued for a 14-year sentence, describing his crimes as "vile." The defence sought six to eight years. Justice Smith imposed 10 years; with credit for time already served in custody and under strict bail conditions, MacDonald had approximately nine years and nine months remaining at the time of the September 8, 2025, sentencing announcement.[^2]
|
||||
|
||||
The Canadian Anti-Hate Network coverage of the case notes that the conviction and sentence established a precedent for prosecuting propaganda production and distribution under Canadian terrorism statutes when the propaganda is demonstrably connected to a listed terrorist organization.
|
||||
|
||||
### Footnotes
|
||||
|
||||
[^1]: CBC News. "Neo-Nazi terror propagandist 'Dark Foreigner' guilty on all counts." April 2025. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/patrick-gordon-macdonald-terror-trial-ottawa-decision-1.7494260; CBC News. "Terror propagandist 'Dark Foreigner' sentenced to 10 years in prison." September 2025. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/terror-propagandist-dark-foreigner-sentenced-to-10-years-in-prison-1.7624892
|
||||
[^2]: Public Prosecution Service of Canada. "MacDonald Sentenced for Terrorism Offences." September 8, 2025. https://www.ppsc-sppc.gc.ca/eng/nws-nvs/2025/08_09_25.html; Canadian Anti-Hate Network. "Atomwaffen Division Propagandist Patrick Macdonald Found Guilty on All Charges." https://www.antihate.ca/atomwaffen_division_propagandist_patrick_macdonald_found_guilty_on_all_charges
|
||||
61
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Patrik Jordan Mathews.md
Normal file
61
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Patrik Jordan Mathews.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,61 @@
|
|||
---
|
||||
category: "Extremism & Violent Networks"
|
||||
tags:
|
||||
- Person
|
||||
- TheBase
|
||||
- NeoNazi
|
||||
- FederalCase
|
||||
- Canada
|
||||
- USA
|
||||
- Paramilitary
|
||||
- Military
|
||||
summary: "Patrik Jordan Mathews was a former Canadian Armed Forces Reserve combat engineer and Base member who was sentenced to nine years in U.S. federal prison in October 2021 for firearms and immigration charges related to a planned mass attack at a Virginia gun rally."
|
||||
created: 2026-05-22
|
||||
updated: 2026-05-22
|
||||
born: 1990
|
||||
location: "Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada"
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
Patrik Jordan Mathews was a Canadian citizen and former combat engineer with the [[Canadian Armed Forces]] Reserves based in [[Winnipeg, Manitoba]]. He joined [[The Base]] and became one of its most operationally significant members, combining military training in demolitions and combat engineering with an accelerationist ideology. After Canadian journalists and the [[Canadian Security Intelligence Service]] (CSIS) identified him as a Base member in August 2019, he fled across the U.S. border illegally and was sheltered by fellow Base members while planning violence. His arrest, prosecution, and sentencing in the [[District of Maryland]] became the highest-profile federal prosecution of The Base's 2020 arrest campaign.[^1]
|
||||
|
||||
### Canadian Forces Unit
|
||||
|
||||
Mathews served as a master corporal with the [[38 Combat Engineer Regiment]], part of the [[38 Canadian Brigade Group]], based in Winnipeg, Manitoba. The role required training in explosives, demolitions, and field fortification. The investigation confirmed he had "basic explosives training" as a function of the combat engineer trade. Combat engineers in the Canadian Armed Forces typically require at minimum a SECRET-level security clearance to perform their duties, and the [[Canadian Forces National Counter-Intelligence Unit]] (CFNIU) assessed the risk that his access to explosives training and any associated cleared material had been compromised.[^2]
|
||||
|
||||
### How Exposure Began and Canadian Investigation
|
||||
|
||||
The chain of events leading to Mathews's identification began with a routine border inspection: Canadian border agents stopped Mathews's vehicle at a Canada-U.S. border crossing in spring 2019 and found racist materials, then notified the [[RCMP]] and the CFNIU. [[Vice Canada]] journalist [[Ben Makuch]] subsequently identified Mathews through his online presence as a member of The Base and published the story in August 2019.[^3]
|
||||
|
||||
The CFNIU produced two classified "information reports" in June and July 2019, before the Vice Canada story, documenting Mathews's alleged extremist ties and assessing him as a potential terrorist threat. This means the Canadian Forces were aware of Mathews as a security concern before media exposure. Following the Vice Canada report in August 2019, the Canadian Forces fast-tracked his administrative removal from the Reserve. Mathews disappeared almost immediately after the story published.
|
||||
|
||||
Three Canadian agencies and one American agency had overlapping equities in the case. The RCMP opened a missing persons investigation when Mathews disappeared in mid-August 2019, and conducted its own parallel extremism investigation. CSIS was involved in intelligence monitoring, though the specific scope is not confirmed in open sources. The [[FBI]] embedded an undercover agent in The Base for months during 2019-2020 and attended Base training camps alongside Mathews and [[Brian Mark Lemley Jr.]] in Georgia in November 2019. No extradition was needed because Mathews had entered the U.S. of his own volition and could be charged under U.S. law for conduct committed on U.S. soil.[^2]
|
||||
|
||||
### Canadian Background and Flight
|
||||
|
||||
Mathews was identified in Canadian press reports in August 2019 as a member of The Base, following an investigation by Vice Canada. After his identity became public, Mathews went absent and crossed illegally into the United States via a wooded area near the Manitoba-Minnesota border. [[William Garfield Bilbrough IV]], a Base member from Maryland, drove to southern Michigan on August 30, 2019, to retrieve Mathews and transport him to the East Coast.[^4]
|
||||
|
||||
### Plotting and Arrest
|
||||
|
||||
Mathews and [[Brian Mark Lemley Jr.]], a U.S. Army veteran and Base member in Delaware, planned violence at the [[Virginia Citizens Defense League]] (VCDL) Lobby Day rally scheduled for January 20, 2020, in [[Richmond, Virginia]], where tens of thousands of gun-rights activists were expected. In recorded conversations and encrypted messages reviewed by the FBI, the two discussed using the rally as an opportunity for mass violence, including discussion of a firearm to be used for "operations." They purchased over 1,500 rounds of ammunition at a Base training camp in Georgia in November 2019.
|
||||
|
||||
The FBI arrested Mathews and Lemley on January 16, 2020, four days before the rally.[^5]
|
||||
|
||||
### Prosecution and Sentence
|
||||
|
||||
Both defendants were charged in [[United States District Court for the District of Maryland]], case 8:20-cr-00033-TDC, before [[U.S. District Judge Theodore D. Chuang]]. Mathews pleaded guilty to charges including transporting a firearm in furtherance of a felony and being an illegal alien in possession of a firearm. Prosecutors successfully argued for application of a terrorism enhancement at sentencing under U.S.S.G. § 3A1.4, meaning the judge found that the offense was calculated to influence or affect government conduct through intimidation, coercion, or mass destruction.
|
||||
|
||||
Judge Chuang sentenced Mathews to nine years in federal prison on October 28, 2021, followed by three years of supervised release. Prosecutors had sought twenty-five years; defense counsel sought thirty-three months. Chuang described Mathews as presenting no remorse. The terrorism enhancement was described by legal commentary as significant precedent for applying the federal terrorism sentencing provision to racially motivated violent extremism cases. As of February 2022, Mathews was serving his sentence at [[United States Penitentiary, Terre Haute]] in Indiana, with a projected release date of September 16, 2027.[^6]
|
||||
|
||||
### Footnotes
|
||||
|
||||
[^1]: CBC News. "U.S. judge sentences Manitoban ex-reservist Patrik Mathews to 9 years in prison for role in neo-Nazi plot." October 28, 2021. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/patrik-mathews-sentencing-1.6226116
|
||||
|
||||
[^2]: CBC News. "Military Conducted Secret Investigation of Reservist Patrik Mathews as a Possible Terrorist Threat." 2021. https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/patrik-mathews-canadian-forces-neo-nazi-terrorist-1.5948202
|
||||
|
||||
[^3]: Global News. "FBI Arrests Patrik Mathews, Missing Ex-Reservist from Manitoba Accused of Neo-Nazi Ties." January 2020. https://globalnews.ca/news/6420266/patrik-mathews-neo-nazi-ties-fbi/
|
||||
|
||||
[^4]: Wilson, Jason. "He Founded an American Neo-Nazi Terror Group. But Will Rinaldo Nazzaro Ever Face US Justice?" *VICE News*, October 2022. https://www.vice.com/en/article/american-terror-rinaldo-nazzaro/
|
||||
|
||||
[^5]: CBC News. "FBI Arrests Reveal Shocking Details in Case Against Former Canadian Reservist Patrik Mathews." January 2020. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/fbi-arrests-the-base-georgia-wisconsin-1.5432006; Extremism GWU, Case document, "Maryland Cell Motion for Detention Pending Trial," Case 8:20-cr-00033-TDC, filed January 21, 2020. https://extremism.gwu.edu/sites/g/files/zaxdzs5746/files/Maryland%20Cell%20Motion%20for%20Detention%20Pending%20Trial.pdf
|
||||
|
||||
[^6]: Military Times. "Judge to Sentence Neo-Nazi Group Members, Including US Army Veteran, Under Terrorism Law." October 25, 2021. https://www.militarytimes.com/news/2021/10/25/judge-to-sentence-neo-nazi-group-members-including-us-army-veteran-under-terrorism-law/; Globe and Mail. "Maryland judge agrees to 'terrorism enhancement' in case of ex-Canadian Armed Forces reservist." https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-ex-canadian-armed-forces-reservist-should-get-25-years-in-prison-us/
|
||||
51
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Ryan Hatfield.md
Normal file
51
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Ryan Hatfield.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,51 @@
|
|||
---
|
||||
category: "Extremism & Violent Networks"
|
||||
tags:
|
||||
- Person
|
||||
- AtomwaffenDivision
|
||||
- NeoNazi
|
||||
- Accelerationism
|
||||
- SiegeCulture
|
||||
- USA
|
||||
- FashFront
|
||||
summary: "Ryan Hatfield (alias 'Ryan Arthur') is the Colorado Springs neo-Nazi who led the Atomwaffen Division's Colorado cell, later founded the National Socialist Order and its successor the National Socialist Resistance Front, which formally dissolved in November 2024, and subsequently became a documented contributor to the FashFront forum."
|
||||
born: ~2000
|
||||
location: "Northglenn, Colorado"
|
||||
created: 2026-05-22
|
||||
updated: 2026-05-22
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
Ryan Thomas Hatfield (alias "Ryan Arthur") is an [[Atomwaffen Division]] (AWD) veteran who joined AWD at approximately 16 years of age and served as the organization's Colorado Springs cell leader. After AWD's formal dissolution through federal prosecutions in 2020, Hatfield became the primary figure sustaining the organizational lineage through successive rebrands: the [[National Socialist Order]] (NSO, announced July 2020), then the [[National Socialist Resistance Front]] (NSRF, announced September 12, 2022), which he formally dissolved on November 8, 2024.
|
||||
|
||||
### AWD Membership and Colorado Cell
|
||||
|
||||
Hatfield was an early AWD recruit who joined while still a teenager, making him one of the younger members of AWD's organizational leadership. He ran AWD's Colorado Springs chapter and remained active in the network through AWD's collapse. His identity was first publicly exposed by journalist [[Nate Thayer]], who died before the Baltimore case was prosecuted.
|
||||
|
||||
### American Futurist and Post-AWD Organizing
|
||||
|
||||
After AWD's dissolution, Hatfield operated the propaganda website [[American Futurist]], the principal publishing platform for the AWD lineage's post-collapse accelerationist content. He published essays under the alias "Ryan Arthur" and used the site to maintain ideological continuity across the NSO and NSRF periods.
|
||||
|
||||
Following his identity's exposure, Hatfield relocated to [[Northglenn, Colorado]], where he was reportedly paying approximately $2,000 per month for a condominium. Anti-fascist researchers distributed flyers to neighbors in his building identifying him.
|
||||
|
||||
### NSO and NSRF
|
||||
|
||||
Hatfield announced the formation of NSO via a blog post on July 25, 2020, framing it as a continuation of AWD's mission by "remaining leadership who were not arrested." NSO ran a new website launched in January 2022 and conducted a membership recruitment push in March 2021 that cited [[Brandon Russell]]'s essays from prison. NSO published writings by Russell during his federal incarceration.
|
||||
|
||||
On September 7, 2022, [[American Futurist]] severed ties with NSO, and on September 12, Hatfield announced the formation of NSRF as a NSO successor, citing dissatisfaction with [[Order of Nine Angles]] (O9A) infiltration of NSO's remaining network. Russell, then on supervised release, attempted to recruit an FBI informant into NSRF in fall 2022, describing prospective members as coming from Maryland and the Carolinas.
|
||||
|
||||
Hatfield announced NSRF's formal dissolution on November 8, 2024, via American Futurist, ending the organizational lineage he had maintained since AWD's collapse.
|
||||
|
||||
### Russell Conspiracy and Terrorgram Coordination
|
||||
|
||||
Leaked chat materials analyzed by [[SPLC Hatewatch]] in February 2023 showed Russell and an account associated with Hatfield appearing to coordinate the release of [[Terrorgram Collective]] propaganda on the American Futurist platform during the period of the [[2023 Baltimore Power Grid Conspiracy]]'s operational planning. An SPLC Hatewatch reporter ([[Hannah Gais]]) noted on social media that an account tied to Russell also shared material from Hatfield claiming to have identified an undercover FBI agent within AWD prior to its collapse.[^1]
|
||||
|
||||
No charges have been filed against Hatfield as of mid-2026.
|
||||
|
||||
### FashFront Activity (2025)
|
||||
|
||||
Following NSRF's dissolution on November 8, 2024, Hatfield continued publishing under the "Ryan Arthur" alias. By 2025 he maintained an active writing thread on [[FashFront]], a new neo-Nazi accelerationist web forum that emerged in mid-2025 at fashfront.st, positioning itself as the successor to [[Iron March]] and [[Fascist Forge]]. The [[Global Project Against Hate and Extremism]] (GPAHE) identified Hatfield's FashFront presence as one of the documented connections between former AWD-network figures and the new forum infrastructure.[^2]
|
||||
|
||||
### Footnotes
|
||||
|
||||
[^1]: SPLC Hatewatch, Hannah Gais. "Leaked Chats, Documents Show Atomwaffen Founder's Path to Terror Plot." February 2023. https://www.splcenter.org/resources/hatewatch/leaked-chats-documents-show-atomwaffen-founders-path-terror-plot/; Colorado Springs Anti-Fascists. "Ryan Hatfield aka 'Ryan Arthur': Atomwaffen Division / American Futurist." November 14, 2023. https://cospringsantifa.noblogs.org/post/2023/11/14/ryan-hatfield-atomwaffen-division-colorado/; Counter Extremism Project. "Atomwaffen Division / National Socialist Order / National Socialist Resistance Front." https://www.counterextremism.com/supremacy/atomwaffen-division-national-socialist-order
|
||||
[^2]: Global Project Against Hate and Extremism. "New Neo-Nazi Web Forum 'Fash Front' Reinvigorating Violent Accelerationist Movement." 2025. https://globalextremism.org/post/fash-front/; FashFront forum. Ryan Arthur's article thread. https://fashfront.st/threads/ryan-arthurs-article-thread.1812/
|
||||
46
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Shahriar J.md
Normal file
46
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Shahriar J.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,46 @@
|
|||
---
|
||||
category: "Extremism & Violent Networks"
|
||||
tags:
|
||||
- Person
|
||||
- NihilisticViolentExtremism
|
||||
- CSAM
|
||||
- Germany
|
||||
- Murder
|
||||
- 764Network
|
||||
- FederalCase
|
||||
summary: "Shahriar J., alias 'White Tiger,' is a 21-year-old dual German-Iranian national arrested in Hamburg in June 2025 and facing 204 charges including murder as a 764 Network operator who allegedly coerced a 13-year-old American into a livestreamed suicide in 2022."
|
||||
created: 2026-05-22
|
||||
updated: 2026-05-22
|
||||
born: 2004
|
||||
location: "Hamburg, Germany"
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
Shahriar J., known online as "White Tiger," is a 21-year-old dual German-Iranian national arrested in [[Hamburg]], Germany on June 17, 2025, as an alleged operator within the [[764 Network|764]] transnational child exploitation network. German prosecutors filed 204 criminal charges against him, including one count of murder and five counts of attempted murder as an indirect perpetrator, along with sexual abuse of children and rape charges. The case is being heard in [[Hamburg]] state court, not under German terrorism statutes.
|
||||
|
||||
### Background
|
||||
|
||||
Shahriar J. allegedly operated as a [[764 Network|764]] network administrator from his parents' home in a wealthy Hamburg suburb beginning in approximately January 2021, when he was 15 or 16 years old. Prosecutors allege he victimized more than 30 children across multiple countries, including victims in [[Germany]], the [[United Kingdom]], the [[United States]], and [[Canada]]. He was identified by law enforcement following an alert from the [[FBI]] that was initially related to child pornography.
|
||||
|
||||
When German police executed a search warrant at the family home, they found approximately 85,000 files and more than 600 videos. The investigation expanded significantly from the initial CSAM referral once the scope of the network evidence was apparent.[^1]
|
||||
|
||||
### The Murder Charge
|
||||
|
||||
The central murder count alleges that Shahriar J. orchestrated the suicide of a 13-year-old American boy in January 2022. Prosecutors allege that Shahriar J. used a Finnish minor as an intermediary, directing the Finnish victim to psychologically coerce the American boy into dying by suicide during a livestream session. The theory of murder "as an indirect perpetrator" relies on German criminal law doctrine recognizing that a person who causes death through the actions of an unwitting or coerced instrument can be charged with murder even without direct physical action.[^2]
|
||||
|
||||
### Trial
|
||||
|
||||
Trial began in Hamburg state court on January 9, 2026. The initial hearing schedule covered 82 days of proceedings, with hearings running through December 17, 2026. The charges are brought under German homicide, CSAM, and sexual abuse statutes. No terrorism charges were filed; the [[FBI]] tip to German authorities identified the case as a CSAM matter, and German prosecutors charged under the statutes applicable to the actual conduct rather than under terrorism frameworks.[^1]
|
||||
|
||||
### Charging Philosophy Contrast with the U.S. Approach
|
||||
|
||||
The Hamburg prosecution proceeds in parallel to the [[Baron Cain Martin]] prosecution in the [[United States]] and provides a direct contrast in charging philosophy. The U.S. government chose to apply [[18 U.S.C. § 2339A]] (material support to terrorists, no FTO designation required) anchored to [[18 U.S.C. § 956|18 U.S.C. § 956(a)]] (conspiracy to kill persons in a foreign country), a terrorism theory that does not require direct proof of a killing, only a conspiracy. German prosecutors charged murder and attempted murder directly under German criminal law, requiring the more demanding proof of direct causal responsibility for death.[^3]
|
||||
|
||||
The contrast reflects a structural difference in the legal systems: U.S. federal law has a well-developed material support framework that allows terrorism prosecution without a completed act of violence, while German law has no directly analogous provision and is therefore limited to traditional criminal statutes.
|
||||
|
||||
### Footnotes
|
||||
|
||||
[^1]: CBS News. "Man dubbed 'White Tiger' charged with murder over U.S. teen's livestreamed suicide." https://www.cbsnews.com/news/man-charged-murder-germany-us-teen-suicide-764-network/
|
||||
|
||||
[^2]: Euronews. "German court begins trial of 'White Tiger' online predator." January 9, 2026. https://www.euronews.com/2026/01/09/german-court-begins-trial-of-white-tiger-online-predator
|
||||
|
||||
[^3]: Baumgartner, Luke, and Barry Jonas. "How the DOJ is Prosecuting Nihilistic Violent Extremism as Domestic Terrorism." *Just Security,* December 9, 2025. https://www.justsecurity.org/126226/prosecuting-nihilistic-violent-extremism-domestic-terrorism/
|
||||
41
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Tony Christopher Long.md
Normal file
41
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Tony Christopher Long.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,41 @@
|
|||
---
|
||||
category: "Extremism & Violent Networks"
|
||||
tags:
|
||||
- Person
|
||||
- 764
|
||||
- NVE
|
||||
- NihilisticViolentExtremism
|
||||
- CSAM
|
||||
- ChildExploitation
|
||||
- AnimalCrushing
|
||||
- FederalCase
|
||||
- California
|
||||
- USA
|
||||
born: 2006
|
||||
location: "Porterville, California"
|
||||
created: 2026-05-21
|
||||
updated: 2026-05-21
|
||||
summary: "Tony Christopher Long is a Porterville, California 764 network member federally indicted in October 2025 on six counts including animal crushing and sexual exploitation of a minor."
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
[[Tony Christopher Long]] (born approximately 2006, Porterville, [[California]]) is a member of the [[764 Network|764]] nihilistic violent extremist network who was indicted by a federal grand jury on October 23, 2025, in the [[Eastern District of California]]. The six-count indictment was announced publicly by DOJ on October 27, 2025. At the time of the federal indictment Long was already in state custody on related charges. He is named in the federal proceedings as a co-conspirator in the broader 764 investigation that produced the separate October 2025 indictment against [[Baron Cain Martin]] in Arizona.[^1]
|
||||
|
||||
### Charges
|
||||
|
||||
The federal indictment charges Long on six counts:
|
||||
- Counts 1-2: Animal crushing (two counts, 18 U.S.C. § 48, maximum 7 years each)
|
||||
- Count 3: Sexual exploitation of a minor (mandatory minimum/maximum up to 30 years)
|
||||
- Count 4: Possession of material involving sexual exploitation of a minor (maximum 10 years)
|
||||
- Count 5: Cyberstalking (maximum 20 years)
|
||||
- Count 6: Transmitting an interstate threat (maximum 2 years)
|
||||
|
||||
The victims include a juvenile in Washington State (the subject of the sexual exploitation and CSAM counts) and a juvenile in Kern County, California (the subject of the cyberstalking and threatening counts). The animal crushing counts involve video recordings of animal abuse, a category federally criminalized under 18 U.S.C. § 48.
|
||||
|
||||
Long operated online under the aliases Inactive, Inactivee0, and inactivecvx, documented in the indictment. His alleged conduct occurred in late 2024.[^1]
|
||||
|
||||
As of the October 2025 indictment, no plea or conviction status was publicly available. The case remained at the charging stage.[^2]
|
||||
|
||||
### Footnotes
|
||||
|
||||
[^1]: U.S. Department of Justice, OPA. "Member of Violent Extremist Network '764' Charged with Animal Crushing, Sexual Exploitation of a Minor, and Other Crimes." October 27, 2025. https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/member-violent-extremist-network-764-charged-animal-crushing-sexual-exploitation-minor
|
||||
[^2]: CyberScoop. "764 member Tony Christopher Long charged in California." https://cyberscoop.com/764-tony-christopher-long-california-charged/
|
||||
24
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Yegor Krasnov.md
Normal file
24
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Yegor Krasnov.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,24 @@
|
|||
---
|
||||
category: "Extremism & Violent Networks"
|
||||
tags:
|
||||
- Person
|
||||
- ManiacMurderCult
|
||||
- NeoNazi
|
||||
- Accelerationism
|
||||
- Ukraine
|
||||
created: 2026-05-21
|
||||
updated: 2026-05-21
|
||||
summary: "Yegor Krasnov, alias 'Maniac,' is a Ukrainian teenager who founded Maniac Murder Cult in Dnipro around 2018, establishing its neo-Nazi accelerationist framework before being arrested by Ukrainian authorities in 2020."
|
||||
born: 2002
|
||||
location: "Dnipro, Ukraine"
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
[[Yegor Krasnov]], known online as "Maniac," (born approximately 2002, [[Dnipro, Ukraine]]) founded [[Maniac Murder Cult]] (MKY) in Dnipro when he was approximately 16 years old, building the organization after an alleged expulsion from another far-right formation and recruiting approximately 15 initial members. He oversaw MKY's first phase of content production - short videos of street attacks that appeared on the Russian imageboard 2chan in 2018 and then migrated to VK and [[Telegram]] in 2019 - before being arrested by [[Ukraine|Ukrainian]] authorities in 2020. Following his arrest, [[Michail Chkhikvishvili]] assumed operational leadership and expanded the network internationally.[^1]
|
||||
|
||||
MKY's core ideology - neo-Nazi accelerationism combined with theistic Satanism and the "Murder Points" tiered reward system - was established under Krasnov's founding leadership. His use of "Maniac" as an alias, and the network's name itself, referenced both his alias and the [[Dnepropetrovsk Maniacs]], three Ukrainian teenagers who filmed and distributed murders in 2007 and whom MKY venerates as exemplary figures.
|
||||
|
||||
Krasnov's legal status under Ukrainian law following his 2020 arrest has not been reported in English-language sources. His organization continued to grow substantially under Chkhikvishvili's subsequent international leadership.[^1]
|
||||
|
||||
### Footnotes
|
||||
|
||||
[^1]: Argentino, Marc-Andre. "Brotherhood of Blood: Understanding the Origins and Trajectory of the Maniac Murder Cult." GNET, December 4, 2024. https://gnet-research.org/2024/12/04/brotherhood-of-blood-understanding-the-origins-and-trajectory-of-the-maniac-murder-cult/
|
||||
Loading…
Add table
Add a link
Reference in a new issue