FUGITIVE NEO-NAZI NABBED IN U.S.
CANADIAN ARMY RESERVIST CHARGED IN U.S. AFTER GUN BUST WITH ALLEGED MILITIA MEMBERS
Patrik Mathews had barely been identified as an alleged member of an extreme white-supremacist group last summer when he simply disappeared. The discovery of the Canadian Army reservist’s pickup truck near Manitoba’s border with Minnesota strongly hinted at where he’d gone, as did later media reports suggesting he was in the United States.
But for the last five months, as the RCMP and the Department of National Defence investigated, Mathews’ precise whereabouts have been a question mark.
That mystery was solved Thursday, as U.S. officials announced the Canadian and two other alleged members of a right-wing hate group called The Base were arrested in Maryland, accused of building a homemade “machine gun,” stockpiling ammunition and trying to cook up an Lsd-like drug.
Federal police had put the trio under video surveillance and somehow accessed encrypted chat rooms used by the group, a criminal complaint filed in a Maryland court stated.
The FBI charged Mathews, 27, with various offences, including being an “alien” in possession of firearms and transporting guns and ammunition with intent to commit a serious crime. The others were charged with weapons offences and harbouring an alien.
The Base has made a name for itself with a series of propaganda videos and rapid growth over the last two years. But the apprehension of members accused of making actual preparations for violence is a turning point, said Josh Lipowsky, senior researcher with the New York-based Counter Extremism Project.
“This raises the profile of The Base and establishes its credibility as a threat that we are addressing,” he said. “It recognizes that The Base needs to be confronted.”
The arrests also came just a few days before a planned pro-gun rally in Richmond, Va., where the governor declared a state of emergency amid fears the demonstration could spawn white-supremacist violence.
Though not mentioned in the criminal complaint, the New York Times quoted unnamed government officials as saying the arrested men had discussed attending the event.
“It’s hard to miss the timing,” said Evan Balgord, executive director of the Canadian Anti-hate Network. “Several militia and neo-nazi groups are going to the gun rally.”
“The would-be terrorists among them are likely thinking the faceoff between these militias and government is a golden opportunity to start their race war, or at least a shootout.”
The U.S. charging document cited discussions within encrypted chat rooms that give a flavour of the organization. Members of The Base talk about creating a white “ethno-state,” committing violent acts against African Americans, Jews and other minorities, running military-style training camps and creating improvised explosive devices, the complaint says.
They are “acceleration neo-nazis, meaning that they want to use violence and terrorism to bring about what they see as an inevitable race war sooner,” says Balgord.
Mathews had been a Manitoba-based combat engineer — with the rank of master corporal — in the army reserves. He was released from the Forces after a Winnipeg Free Press reporter went undercover to infiltrate The Base, and accused him of being one of the group’s recruiters. Then, as the Canadian Forces came under scrutiny for harbouring alleged white supremacists, Mathews vanished.
The RCMP investigated him as a missing-persons case but that probe has been concluded and no charges are pending against him in Canada, a spokeswoman for the force said Thursday. She mentioned nothing about investigating his alleged extremist links.
The complaint filed by U.S. authorities fills in some of the blanks. Mathews slipped over the Manitoba-minnesota border last Aug. 19, and about 10 days later was picked up by two other alleged members of The Base in Michigan, according to the document filed in a U.S. District Court in Greenbelt, Md.
Mathews, Brian Mark Lemley, 33, and William Garfield Bilbrough, 19, drove southeast, with Lemley and Mathews, renting an apartment together last November in Elkton, Md., halfway between Philadelphia and Maryland.
Last December, they used parts they ordered to build a functioning assault rifle, and tried to manufacture DMT, an illegal hallucinogenic drug with effects similar to LSD, said the complaint.
FBI officers observed and videotaped Mathews and Lemley at a gun range in nearby Delaware earlier this month. Lemley commented that the rifle appeared to fire more than one round at a time, the document charges. “Oh, oops, looks like I accidentally made a machine gun,” the document quotes him as saying to the Canadian.
Lemley, a former “cavalry scout” in the U.S. army, then reportedly said “I’m going to stow it until next week, just in case the ATF shows up tomorrow,” referring to the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
“Um, if they show up, we got other problems,” Mathews replied, according to the complaint.
Over six days in January, the pair bought a total of 2,000 rounds of ammunition and obtained “plate carriers” that can hold body armour, says the document.