Three members of a Kansas militia group were charged Friday with plotting to bomb an apartment complex that’s home to Somali immigrants in the western Kansas meatpacking town of Garden City, a thwarted attack prosecutors say was planned for the day after the November election.
(FOX)- The arrests were the culmination of an eight-month FBI investigation that took agents “deep into a hidden culture of hatred and violence,” Acting U.S. Attorney Tom Beall said.
A complaint unsealed Friday charges Curtis Wayne Allen, 49; Patrick Eugene Stein, 47; and Gavin Wayne Wright, 49, with conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction. Their first court appearance is Monday.
Prosecutors said the men don’t yet have attorneys. Publicly listed phone numbers for the men couldn’t immediately be found.
The men are members of a small militia group that calls itself “the Crusaders,” and whose members espouse sovereign citizen, anti-government, anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant extremist beliefs, according to the complaint.
The complaint alleges group members chose the target based on their hatred for Muslims, people of Somali descent and immigrants — and out of a desire to inspire other militia groups and “wake people up.”
(Photo Credit: Sedgwick County Sheriff’s Office via AP)