The US Department of Justice has filed terrorism charges against two alleged leaders of an online neo-Nazi coalition that published an assassination “hit list” which included former Massachusetts US attorney Rachael Rollins.
Dallas Humber, a 34-year-old from Elk Grove, Calif., and Matthew Allison, 37, of Boise, Idaho, were arrested this month and charged with soliciting hate crimes, soliciting the murder of federal officials, and conspiring to provide material support to terrorists. Their coalition, called the “Terrorgram Collective,” also allegedly sought to incite a race war.
Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement that the indictment “charges the defendants with leading a transnational terrorist group dedicated to attacking America’s critical infrastructure, targeting a hit list of our country’s public officials, and carrying out deadly hate crimes — all in the name of violent white supremacist ideology.”
Terrorgram Collective is a network of white supremacist and fascist accounts on the messaging platform Telegram, according to authorities. Humber and Allison allegedly used Telegram to disseminate bomb-making instructions, encourage the sabotage of infrastructure, and celebrate murders carried out by white supremacists across the world.
They also allegedly targeted American public officials, business people, and nonprofit leaders for assassination, publishing their names, photographs, and addresses on a “hit list,” prosecutors said.
Prosecutors redacted the names of those targeted in their indictment, but the Globe reviewed an image naming Rollins, calling her a racial slur, and listing her address. Rollins was the first Black woman to serve as US attorney for Massachusetts. Rollins served as Suffolk district attorney from 2019 to 2022, when she took office as US attorney. She resigned in May 2023 after an ethics investigation found she had used her position to influence the election of her successor as Suffolk DA.
Humber allegedly posted about the hit list on Telegram in the spring of 2022, according to the indictment. The Globe could not confirm exactly when Rollins’s information was distributed.
Rollins declined to comment through a representative.
Humber and Allison allegedly joined Terrorgram in 2019 and became the group’s leaders in 2022 after a previous leader was arrested on terrorism charges. In addition to Rollins, their hit list allegedly included a US senator and a federal judge, among other officials.
Humber and Allison allegedly used the Terrorgram network to advocate for and glorify terror attacks against Black people, Muslim immigrants, Jews, and LGBTQ+ people, according to posts quoted in the indictment. In June 2023, they allegedly called for their followers to target Pride month events with “mass shootings, arson, bombings, vehicular attacks, the list goes on.”
Terrorgram followers have already committed murders abroad, prosecutors said. In 2022, a 19-year-old man in Slovakia fatally shot two people in a gay bar and thanked Terrorgram in a manifesto. Last month, an 18-year-old Terrorgram follower in Turkey live streamed himself stabbing five people outside a mosque, prosecutors said.
When authorities arrested Humber in California, they allegedly found a 3D-printed AR-15 rifle, ammunition, and Nazi paraphernalia on her property. When Allison was arrested, he was allegedly wearing a backpack containing a gun, ammo, and zip ties.
Dan Glaun can be reached at dan.glaun@globe.com. Follow him @dglaun.
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Publish date : 2024-09-15 09:39:00
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