FBI agent
FBI agentiStock

A 28-year-old man was sentenced on Friday to nearly 20 years in prison for plotting to bomb a Colorado synagogue last year, The Associated Press reported.

Judge Raymond P. Moore set the 235-month sentence for Richard Holzer and imposed a 15-year term of supervised release.

Throughout the sentencing trial, Moore expressed harsh criticism of Holzer’s previous statements to undercover FBI agents and social media accounts and described Holzer’s life as filled with violent and hateful imagery.

Holzer was arrested in November of 2019 by the FBI after unknowingly working with federal agents to plan the attack on Temple Emanuel in Pueblo.

In October, he pleaded guilty to one count of attempting to obstruct free exercise of religion and one count of attempting to maliciously damage and destroy a building used in interstate commerce.

Holzer’s defense team argued that his suffering of fetal alcohol syndrome influenced his development into adulthood and contributed to his “unmet and overwhelming need to seem more important than he is.”

The defense asked the judge for a shorter sentence for Holzer to benefit from post-prison rehabilitation and also said that he no longer held the supremacist-like beliefs.

The Temple Emanuel synagogue is the second-oldest in Colorado and was completed in 1900, according to its website.

Following Holzer’s arrest, the synagogue announced it would add surveillance cameras to enhance security that was already tightened in response to the deadly Pittsburgh synagogue the previous year.