A former Canadian Armed Forces reservist with ties to the American neo-Nazi movement has been sentenced to nine years in jail after American prosecutors said he was part of a plot to to start a race war.
Prosecutors had asked for a 25 year prison term after Patrik Mathews, 28, pleaded guilty to four charges earlier in the year, including illegally transporting a firearm and obstruction of justice.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas Windom had asked U.S. District Court Justice Theodore Chuang to add a “terrorism enhancement” to the charges, stating that Mathews’ motives involved attacking federal officials and government facilities.
Prosecutors said Mathews had ties to The Base, which the ADL describes as “a small militant neo-Nazi organization that emerged mid-2018 and is primarily active in the U.S.”
He was arrested along with two Americans by the FBI in 2020 for allegedly speaking about assassinating the Jewish speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates and for planning other attacks.
Recordings were played for the court of conversations regarding killing politicians, poisoning water supplies and derailing trains that would trigger a race war in the U.S, the Manitoba Post reported.
U.S. District Court sentencing judge Theodore Chuang ruled that Mathews had intended to commit terrorist act and said that a terrorism enhancement to the charges meant he could have faced a maximum of 25 years in prison.
Mathews’ father read a short statement during the sentencing hearing, defending his son. He said his son was on the autism spectrum and was a good person who took a wrong path about a troubled childhood where he was bullied.
However, the judge said that Mathews have never apologized for his part in what the FBI termed a plan to trigger violent unrest, and also described the recorded conversations between Mathews and another defendant as full of “passion” when they spoke about murdering people, CHVN reported.
(Arutz Sheva’s North American desk is keeping you updated until the start of Shabbat in New York. The time posted automatically on all Arutz Sheva articles, however, is Israeli time.)