{"id":1528840,"date":"2022-06-26T15:49:29","date_gmt":"2022-06-26T19:49:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1528840"},"modified":"2022-06-26T15:49:44","modified_gmt":"2022-06-26T19:49:44","slug":"u-s-army-soldier-pleads-guilty-to-planning-jihadi-attack-on-his-own-unit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/u-s-army-soldier-pleads-guilty-to-planning-jihadi-attack-on-his-own-unit\/","title":{"rendered":"U.S. Army Soldier Pleads Guilty To Planning \u2018Jihadi Attack\u2019 On His Own Unit"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">26<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fu-s-army-soldier-pleads-guilty-to-planning-jihadi-attack-on-his-own-unit%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1528840&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">A U.S. Army soldier pleaded guilty Friday to colluding with an extremist group to carry out an attack on his unit.<\/p>\n<p><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">U.S. Army Private Ethan Melzer coordinated with members of the group Order of Nine Angles (O9A), a U.K. group with \u201cneo-Nazi, anti-Semitic, and Satanic beliefs,\u201d to attack his unit, the Department of Justice (DOJ) said Friday in a\u00a0<a class=\"editor-rtfLink\" href=\"https:\/\/www.justice.gov\/usao-sdny\/pr\/us-army-soldier-pleads-guilty-attempting-murder-fellow-service-members-deadly-ambush\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">press release<\/a><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">. Melzer has been a member of the group since at least 2017.<\/p>\n<p><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">\u201cAs he admitted in court today, Ethan Melzer attempted to orchestrate a murderous ambush on his own unit by unlawfully disclosing its location, strength, and armaments to a neo-Nazi, anarchist, white supremacist group,\u201d U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said in a statement.<\/p>\n<p><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">\u201cThe defendant believed he could force the U.S. into prolonged armed conflict while causing the deaths of as many soldiers as possible. Melzer\u2019s traitorous conduct was a betrayal of his storied unit and nothing short of an attack against the most essential American values. Thanks to the incredible work of the FBI and the U.S. Army, Melzer\u2019s duplicity was revealed and his murderous attack thwarted,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n<p><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">Federal agents arrested Melzer on June 10, 2020, and charged the 22-year-old Louisville man with, \u201cconspiring and attempting to murder U.S. nationals, conspiring and attempting to murder military service members, providing and attempting to provide material support to terrorists, and conspiring to murder and maim in a foreign country,\u201d the DOJ\u00a0<a class=\"editor-rtfLink\" href=\"https:\/\/www.justice.gov\/opa\/pr\/us-army-soldier-charged-terrorism-offenses-planning-deadly-ambush-service-members-his-unit\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">said<\/a><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">\u00a0at the time. Melzer pleaded guilty to the charges and was expected to stand trial next month.<\/p>\n<p><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">Melzer joined the Army in 2018 and, as a member of the O9A, sought to infiltrate the U.S. military. In October 2019, Melzer deployed to Italy with the 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team. In May 2020, Melzer and his unit were reassigned to guard a military installation in Turkey.<\/p>\n<p><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">After receiving the new assignment, Melzer began passing along classified information about his unit and its mission to members of the O9A to plan an attack on the U.S., an attack in which Melzer said he was willing to die in. \u201cI would\u2019ve died successfully,\u201d he wrote to members of O9A.<\/p>\n<p><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">\u201c[Y]ou just gotta understand that currently I am risking my literal free life to give you all this,\u201d Melzer told members of O9A. Melzer and the other O9A members referred to the object of their planning as a \u201cjihadi attack\u201d and \u201cmass casualty\u201d event.<\/p>\n<p><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">At the same time, Melzer was also accessing and reading extremist materials from a number of groups, including O9A and ISIS. Melzer and members of O9A also passed messages along to someone Melzer believed to be a member of the al-Qaeda terror group.<\/p>\n<p><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">Federal authorities tracked and arrested Melzer in part because of information passed through and access to messages granted by Joshua Caleb Sutter, a reported Satanist, and propagandist for the O9A who has worked as a paid informant for the FBI since 2004, according to\u00a0<a class=\"editor-rtfLink\" href=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/culture\/culture-features\/the-satanist-neo-nazi-plot-to-murder-u-s-soldiers-1352629\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">Rolling Stone<\/a><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">. The FBI often uses such messengers as informants because they are typically well-connected within extremists\u2019 communities but refrain from participating in criminal conduct.<\/p>\n<p><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">Sutter\u2019s involvement in the case has raised questions over the FBI\u2019s role in taking down potentially deadly attackers.<\/p>\n<p><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">\u201cThe confidential informant has been mismanaged for decades \u2014 that\u2019s a very fraught enterprise, the idea that you\u2019re going to go out and find people with firsthand knowledge of criminal activity and to the extent they\u2019re cooperating with you, it\u2019s because they\u2019re betraying their colleagues,\u201d former FBI agent Mike German, who infiltrated white supremacist groups in the 1990s, told Rolling Stone. \u201cWhere the FBI gets in trouble all the time is ignoring the crimes the informants are committing.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">\u201cOriginally, they must\u2019ve thought signing up a propagandist who agreed not to engage in criminal activity was appealing,\u201d German continued, referring to the FBI\u2019s hiring of Sutter. \u201cTo the extent that this guy is sending this ideology into the ether for everyone to absorb \u2014 how many others are following through and acting on it?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A U.S. Army soldier pleaded guilty Friday to colluding with an extremist group to carry out an attack on his unit. U.S. Army Private Ethan Melzer coordinated with members of the group Order of Nine Angles (O9A), a U.K. group with \u201cneo-Nazi, anti-Semitic, and Satanic beliefs,\u201d to attack his unit, the Department of Justice (DOJ) &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":70,"featured_media":1528857,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1528840","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1528840","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/70"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1528840"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1528840\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1528857"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1528840"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1528840"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1528840"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}