'Terrorism Enhancement' On Sentencing Nets Neo-Nazi Pair 9 Years In Prison Each

Mary Papenfuss
·2 min read

A Maryland judge applied a “terrorism enhancement” to prison sentences meted out to two members of a neo-Nazi group, upping their terms to nine years each.

The men merited the enhancement due to the “passion” and “virulence” to take down the U.S. government and murder lawmakers expressed in conversations captured on FBI surveillance tapes, U.S. District Judge Theodore Chuang noted in his sentencing Thursday, The Guardian reported.

Conversations between Brian Mark Lemley Jr., 35, and Patrik Jordan Mathews, 29, included plans to murder a Virginia lawmaker, wreck power and rail lines, and free Dylann Roof, who murdered nine Black church members in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015. Roof is on death row.

Lemley and Mathews were members of the Base, a violently racist and anti-Semitic extremist group, and they participated in firearm trainings with the group, according to the Justice Department.

Lemley, an Army veteran, insisted the men were just talking.

“The things I said are horrible and don’t reflect who I really am or who my family raised me to be,” Lemley told the judge, The Associated Press reported. “Murder was never in my heart; only foolish dreams of war glory and valor.”

Mathews, a former Canadian reservist, told Chuang he wasn’t a “mean person,” The Winnipeg Free Press in Canada reported.

“I got involved with people who were extreme, very extreme, and hateful to the point of action,” he said.

The men were arrested early last year when FBI agents learned they intended to bring guns to a pro-gun rally in Richmond, Virginia, which they believed would kick off a civil war and the collapse of the U.S. government. Both men pleaded guilty in June to firearms charges.

Their lawyers argued that the men should be sentenced only for crimes they pleaded guilty to rather than for plans that were not carried out. Prosecutors had sought 25-year sentences.

This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.

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