FBI nabs white extremists

WASHINGTON (AFP) — The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) arrested three alleged members of the white extremist group “The Base” Thursday, saying they accumulated ammunition and built a functioning automatic weapon, days before a Virginia rally against gun controls.

Federal prosecutors in Greenbelt, Maryland said that US citizens Brian Lemley, 33, and William Bilbrough, 19, and Canadian Patrik Jordan Mathews, 27, were all charged with felony firearms violations.

Lemley and Bilbrough were also charged in relation to transporting and harboring an illegal alien.

Prosecutors said the three were members of The Base, described as an international network of white nationalists who have paramilitary training camps and who discuss online bomb-making and “committing acts of violence against minority communities.”

The arrest came a day after the governor of the neighboring state of Virginia declared a “state of emergency” ahead of a gun rights rally in the capital of Richmond, citing “credible threats” of violence from white nationalist and militia groups.

Mathews, a Canadian army reserve combat engineer trained in explosives, was reported missing in Canada in August 2019 after he was suspended from his reserve unit in relation alleged neo-Nazi activities.

The three were members of The Base, described as an international network of white nationalists who have paramilitary training camps and who discuss online bomb-making and committing acts of violence against minority communities.

The FBI said he illegally crossed into the United States and was met in Minnesota by Lemley and Bilbrough, who drove him to Maryland.

In January, FBI investigators observed them assembling from parts an assault rifle and test-firing it at a Maryland shooting range at rates of more than one round at a time, making it an illegal automatic firearm.

US media cited unnamed law enforcement officials as saying the three discussed going to the Richmond protest Monday.

The protest is against a new Virginia law banning guns in the buildings of the

state legislature.