Authorities said a member of the neo-Nazi group who sought to intimidate journalists and activists, especially Jews and minorities, was sentenced Wednesday to more than a year in prison.
Arizona’s 21-year-old Johnny Roman Garza is the first of four alleged members of the Atomovafen department, who were arrested in four states this year and will be convicted of conspiracy to send threatening posters.
He pleaded guilty to federal conspiracy in September and was sentenced to 16 months in prison, as well as three years’ probation, the Justice Department said.
In January, Garza went to the Arizona home of the editor of a local Jewish publication and put up a poster in her bedroom window, prosecutors said.
The poster had the editor’s name and address and read in part “The result of your actions. Our patience is its limit” and “You have been visited by your local Nazis.”
U.S. Attorney Brian T. of the West District of Washington. Moore said in a statement that Garza was not the mastermind of the conspiracy but adopted it.
“Finally, in the dark of night, he delivered a hateful, threatening poster – spreading fear and anxiety. “Such behavior has no place in our community,” Moore said.
Garza has since denied his views, obtained counseling and sought to contact groups such as the Anti-Defamation Mission League to put in place a program to prevent others from being recruited, his attorney said in court documents.
He told U.S. District Judge John Kughnaur on Wednesday that it was “a time of darkness and solitude.”
“Unfortunately, I probably fell with the worst crowd you could possibly have. Participate, at least a very self-destructive crowd,” Garza told the judge, according to the Associated Press.
The attempt was spearheaded by two others who have been accused: Cameron Brandon Shea of Washington State, who came up with the allegation; And Caleb Cole, the alleged leader of the Washington Atomwefen Division group, who helped make the posters, according to the criminal complaint.
Shia and Cole are due to go on trial in March. A fourth man, Ashley Parker-Dieppe, 21, of Tampa, Florida, has pleaded guilty, and is due to be sentenced in February.
Before putting up the poster at the editor’s house, Garza asked for a poster in the Phoenix apartment complex where a member of the Arizona Association of Black Journalists lived, but could not find a good place to put it, and he left, accepting the application.
The AP report said Judge Kughannor did not name President Donald Trump on Wednesday but said officials at “the highest levels of our government” find it difficult to refer to journalists as “enemies of the people.”
“By referring to journalism and the press and media as ‘fake news’, people who are sensitive to such suggestions, very young people are empowered … that this kind of conduct is appropriate,” he said.
Associated Press Contributed.
