A 23-year-old neo-Nazi was charged on Friday with planning an attack on a synagogue and gay club in Las Vegas.
The suspect, Conor Climo, who was employed as a security guard, was arrested on Friday after FBI agents found unregistered bomb-making materials in his home, including fireworks, fuses, wiring, thermite, sulfuric acid, a soldering iron, circuit boards and other items needed for building timed explosive devices. The agents also found a notebook with handwritten plans on carrying out terror attacks in Vegas.
The FBI said that Climo had been "communicating with individuals who identified with a white supremacist extremist organization using the National Socialist Movement to promote their ideology." The Las Vegas Joint Terrorism Task Force began investigating Climo in April when they discovered he was communicating with Atomwaffen Division, a white supremacist neo-Nazi group.
"AWD encourages attacks on the federal government, including critical infrastructure, minorities, homosexuals, and Jews," the complaint states. "AWD works to recruit like-minded members to the organization, train them in military tactics, hand-to-hand combat, bomb making, and other techniques in preparation for an 'ultimate and uncompromising victory' in a race war."
According to the charge, Climo discussed his plans to improvise explosive devices and attack a synagogue and gay bar with undercover FBI agents on encrypted online chats.
After Climo was arrested, he admitted to the FBI agents that he belonged to a neo-Nazi group and that he hated "African-Americans, Jews, and homosexuals" and was planning on building an improvised explosive device.
“Threats of violence motivated by hate and intended to intimidate or coerce our faith-based and LGBTQ communities have no place in this Country,” United States Attorney Nicholas A. Trutanich said in a statement. "Law enforcement in Nevada remains determined to use the full weight of our investigative resources to prevent bias-motivated violence before it happens. I commend our partners who identified the threat and took swift and appropriate action to ensure justice and protect the community."