The defendants, of neo-Nazi leanings, planned to cause a major power outage that would lead to street riots to “destroy” the city
A couple has been arrested in the United States accused of planning the “complete destruction” of Baltimore, Maryland. The two young men were arrested on Sunday, but the Justice Department has not disclosed the facts, which are attributed to racial hatred, until today. Two-thirds of the city’s residents are African American.
The defendants had drawn up a delusional plan, according to which they intended to seriously damage Baltimore’s energy infrastructure and leave the population without supplies, to unleash chaos and street riots so that the citizens themselves “destroy everything at his footsteps.” . The defendants are Clint Russell, 34, and his partner Sarah Beth Clendaniel, 32. Both had been released from prison for less than a year. Russell was serving a five-year sentence for bomb making and Clendaniel for shoplifting with a machete.
The two “conspired to do maximum damage to the electrical system,” said Tom Sobocinski, chief of the FBI’s Baltimore office. The plan was to fire on five stations at strategic points on several occasions and simultaneously. According to his projections, the facilities would have taken weeks to restore supplies.
The roadmap that both defendants, with neo-Nazi traits, wanted to follow is recorded in several audio recordings and written documents in which Russell alludes to Hitler, Ted Kaczynski, known as the Unabomber, and the author of the 2011 Norway attacks, Anders Breivik, that have become benchmarks for white supremacy.
A native of Florida, Russell was the leader of a neo-Nazi terror network founded in 2013 called the Atomwaffen Division, now known as the National Socialist Order. Despite being registered by the police, he had not been prosecuted. On social media, he boasted of his ideals and predicted his plan of attack as “legendary.” “The best anyone can do,” according to transcripts obtained by the FBI.
The authorities have stated that the electricity and communication networks have become the target of attacks by sympathizers of these racist movements with the aim of instilling fear.
Baltimore, with a population of 570,000, is one of the ten cities with the largest black population and has for years been a reflection of racial inequality in the country. The city is ranked as one of the most segregated in the United States, and experts estimate that the poorest black residents live about 20 years less than residents of wealthy white neighborhoods.
Source: La Verdad
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