3 arrested in ‘bomb plot targeting Somalis in Kansas’

Three members of a Kansas militia group are accused of plotting to bomb an apartment complex that’s home to Somali immigrants in the western Kansas meatpacking town of Garden City, a thwarted attack prosecutors say was planned for the day after the November election.
A complaint unsealed Friday charges Curtis Wayne Allen, 49; Patrick Eugene Stein, 47; and Gavin Wayne Wright, 49, with conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction. The men are members of a small militia group that calls itself “the Crusaders,” and whose members espouse sovereign citizen, anti-government, anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant extremist beliefs, according to the complaint.
Prosecutors said the men don’t yet have attorneys. Publicly listed phone numbers for the men couldn’t immediately be found. Their first court appearance is Monday.
The arrests were the culmination of an eight-month FBI investigation that took agents “deep into a hidden culture of hatred and violence,” Acting US Attorney Tom Beall said.
The complaint alleges group members chose the target based on their hatred for Muslims, people of Somali descent and immigrants — and out of a desire to inspire other militia groups and “wake people up.” The FBI began a domestic terrorism investigation of the group in February, and a confidential source attended its meetings in southwestern Kansas.
In a June meeting, Stein brought up the Orlando nightclub shooting and proposed carrying out a similar attack against Muslim refugees in Garden City, according to the complaint. They ultimately decided to target the apartment complex because of the number of Somalis who lived there and the fact that one of the apartments was used as a mosque. The complex houses about 120 Somali residents, Beall said.
The complaint said Stein discussed the explosives used in the 1995 bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City by Timothy McVeigh.
The men, who were arrested in Liberal on Friday morning, performed surveillance of the apartment building and prepared a manifesto, Beall said.
In a profanity-laced conference call that law enforcement monitored, Stein said the only way “this country’s ever going to get turned around is it will be a bloodbath,” according to the complaint.