The US Justice Department has charged a neo-Nazi leader and his associate with plotting to attack Baltimore’s power grid, a plan the FBI thwarted with the help of a confidential informant.
Brandon Russell, of Orlando, Florida and Sarah Clendaniel from Maryland, were arrested last week, officials said in a briefing on Monday, and they have been charged with conspiring to damage an energy facility.
Russell is a convicted felon and founder of a neo-Nazi group called the Atomwaffen Division that works toward “ushering in the collapse of civilization,” according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights organisation that tracks US hate groups.
Russell previously was sentenced to five years in prison after pleading guilty to possession of an unregistered destruction device and the improper storage of explosive materials.
At the time of his arrest, he was still on supervised release, according to the FBI.
The FBI on Monday alleged the plot was racially motivated but did not provide details. About 62 per cent of Baltimore city residents are Black, according to US Census data.
“Clendaniel and Russell conspired and took steps to shoot multiple electrical substations in the Baltimore area aiming to ‘completely destroy this whole city’, but these plans were stopped,” Erek Barron, the US Attorney for the District of Maryland, said in the press briefing.
Russell first came under suspicion in 2017, when his former roommate Devon Arthurs was arrested for murder.
Read the article by Kanishka Singh and Sarah N. Lynch in The Canberra Times.