(Washington) Three American white supremacists pleaded guilty on Wednesday to planning attacks on the power grid in an attempt to provoke interracial war in the United States, the Justice Department announced.
Posted at 5:01 p.m.
“The three defendants have admitted their involvement in a disturbing scheme to promote white supremacist ideology, to attack energy facilities with the aim of weakening the economy and inflaming divisions in our country, summarized the Deputy Minister of Justice in charge of national security, Matthew Olsen, in a press release.
Christopher Cook, 20, Jonathan Frost, 24, and Jackson Sawall, 22, pleaded guilty to criminal conspiracy with terrorism in federal court in Ohio (north).
The three young men “wanted to attack regional power stations, with the idea that this would cause an economic crisis and unrest”, estimated for its part the federal police (the FBI), by the voice of the deputy director of its counter-terrorism division. , Timothy Langan.
Christopher Cook and Jonathan Frost met online in the fall of 2019, according to court documents, before discussing an attack on the US power grid.
After recruiting Jackson Sawall, each was assigned a power station in a region of the United States, with the plan to attack him with powerful fu weapons.
“The defendants believed their action would cost the government millions of dollars and cause an uprising by Americans in those areas,” the Justice Department noted.
Could a power outage lasting several months cause interracial warfare and lead to a “Great Depression” like the one America experienced in the 1930s? It was one of the questions that interested them, continues the American government.
Jonathan Frost had provided the other two defendants with necklaces poisoned with fentanyl, a powerful opiate, so that they could kill themselves if arrested.
Jackson Sawall had swallowed his during a traffic stop, but had survived.
The other two had traveled to Texas the following month to try to recruit new stooges, until their arrest, court documents show.
The authorities then seized numerous firearms and hundreds of ammunition.
The three men, who risk up to 15 years in prison, will know their sentence at a later date.