Militia Members Arrested In Alleged Mosque Attack Plot In Kansas

Three members of a Kansas militia group were charged Friday with plotting to bomb an apartment building filled with Somali immigrants in the western Kansas meatpacking town of Garden City.

Acting U.S. Attorney Tom Beall said Curtis Wayne Allen, 49; Patrick Eugene Stein, 47; and Gavin Wayne Wright, 49, are members of a group calling itself the Kansas Security Force.

CBS News

The arrests were the culmination of an eight-month FBI investigation that took agents “deep into a hidden culture of hatred and violence,” Beall said. Federal law enforcement officials say the men intended to use four large car bombs to destroy an apartment building where about 120 people lived -- most of them from Somalia.

The men, who were arrested in Liberal on Friday morning, performed surveillance of the apartment building and prepared a manifesto, Beall said. If convicted, the men could be sentenced to up to life in federal prison without parole.

According to the criminal complaint  the suspects were motivated by “a hatred for Muslims, individuals of Somali descent, and immigrants,” reports CBS News correspondent Chip Reid.

Stein, according to the complaint, referred to Somalis as “cockroaches” and said “the only good Muslim is a dead Muslim.”

Eric Jackson, special agent in charge of the Kansas City, Missouri, FBI field office, said the group has militia and sovereign citizen ties.

Garden City is home to a Tyson Foods beef slaughterhouse that has drawn a diverse immigrant population to the area.

The case is the latest involving militia groups in the state. Earlier this year, a planned armed protest outside a Wichita mosque prompted the Islamic Society of Wichita to cancel an appearance by a speaker whom protesters believed supported terrorism.

The Justice Department’s National Security Division created a new position a year ago to help coordinate investigations into violent homegrown extremism, like the one that resulted in the three arrests.

Friday’s arrests and charges prompted the Council on American-Islamic Relations to call on state and federal law enforcement agencies across the nation to increase protection for mosques and other Islamic institutions. The group also cited reports of threats against a Michigan center and anti-Muslim graffiti at a New Jersey mosque.

“We ask our nation’s political leaders, and particularly political candidates, to reject the growing Islamophobia in our nation,” Nihad Awad, the group’s national executive director, said in a statement.

The alleged plotters have not yet obtained lawyers or entered a plea.