Alleged US arsonist accused of giving list of Israel-linked individuals to Hezbollah
Regan Prater, charged last year for 2019 fire that destroyed historic Tennessee civil rights center, also indicted for terror over assistance to Iran-backed terror group
Add ToI as a Preferred Source on Google
A US court laid terror charges on a man accused of handing a list of people with apparent Israel ties to Hezbollah and of firebombing a nonprofit research and education center, documents showed Thursday.
Regan Darby Prater was initially charged last year over the 2019 arson attack that destroyed the offices of the Highlander Research and Education Center, a social justice center that played a central role in the US civil rights movement, in New Market, Tennessee.
According to a court document published by the Court Watch website on Thursday, a new charge accuses Prater of handing over a list of “individuals purportedly affiliated with Israel” to the Iran-backed terror organization based in Lebanon.
Along with malicious use of fire, the additional charge Prater now faces is for the attempted provision of material support to a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization.
The document does not detail how or when Prater contacted Hezbollah.
Earlier court documents said Prater was motivated by the mass shootings targeting mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, several days before he carried out the firebombing attack in March 2019.
He spray-painted a symbol of the Iron Guard, a WWII-era Romanian Nazi group, in the parking lot of the nonprofit center that he targeted, the documents said.
Prater was caught out after admitting to an informant on the Telegram messaging app — which he used to speak to other white supremacists — to using “a sparkler bomb and some Napalm” to burn down the center.
The center, founded in 1932, became a hub for the civil rights movement in the 20th century.
Activist Rosa Parks attended a workshop at the institution some weeks before she refused to give up her bus seat to a white passenger, sparking the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott.
Additionally, Martin Luther King Jr. addressed the center to mark its 25th anniversary in 1957, an event Parks attended.
The center said the 2019 fire destroyed one of its archives, which held a trove of historic documents and artifacts from the civil rights era.
The Times of Israel Community.