WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 17th January, 2020) The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has arrested three armed neo-Nazi suspects who belong to a violent extremist group and were traveling to a pro-gun rally in Virginia in anticipation of a possible race war, the Justice Department and local media reports said on Monday.
"A federal criminal complaint has been filed charging three alleged members of the racially motivated violent extremist group 'The Base' with firearms and alien-related charges," the Justice Department said in a press release.
The three men belong to a white supremacist group who refer to themselves as "The Base," which is the English translation for the Arabic words al-Qaeda.
Experts who track white nationalist groups say The Base is a group that encourages the onset of anarchy and seeks to unite neo-Nazis in preparation for a race war.
According to the criminal complaint, the three men had conversations in The Base's encrypted chat rooms in which they discussed "recruitment, creating a white ethno-state, committing acts of violence against minority communities (including African-Americans and Jewish-Americans), the organization's military-style training camps, and ways to make improvised explosive devices," among other things.
The three men, one of whom is a former reservist for the Canadian Army, had guns and were taken into custody on Thursday morning, the New York Times reported. They had discussed traveling to a pro-gun rally next week in Richmond, the report said.
The three men - Brian Mark Lemley, 33, and William Garfield Bilbrough IV, 19, both from Maryland, and Canadian national Jordan Mathews, 27 - are scheduled to appear in federal court before a judge on Thursday afternoon, the Justice Department said.
Mathews, the former Canadian army reservist, is believed to be a main recruiter for The Base, the New York Times reported. He had entered the United States illegally from Canada, according to the Justice Department.
Trained as a combat engineer and considered an expert in explosives, Mathews was dismissed from the Canadian Army after his ties to white supremacists surfaced, the paper said.
The group had become a growing concern for the FBI as it worked to recruit more people to its violent cause. Several members of the group have recently been arrested, including a young man in New Jersey in November, after he was suspected of recruiting for the group and advocating violence such as the killing of black people.
