According to HuffPost, a United States Army private is facing federal terrorism charges after allegedly confessing to working with an extremist Neo-Nazi group to attack his own military unit.
Federal agents arrested 22-year-old Ethan Melzer from Kentucky on charges of conspiring 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. Melzer was interviewed late last month and arrested on June 10. The criminal complaint and indictment were unsealed this past Monday.
Federal authorities reportedly said that Melzer worked with the Order of the Nine Angles, aka “O9A”, which was described as “an occult-based neo-Nazi and racially motivated violent extremist group.”
Melzer joined the Army in 2018 and the O9A around 2019, according to the feds. The feds allegedly said he “consumed propaganda from multiple extremist groups,” including ISIS, and found that Melzer’s iCloud account had an “ISIS-issued document with a title that included the phrase ‘HARVEST OF THE SOLDIERS’ and described attacks and murders of U.S. personnel.”
Melzer allegedly leaked the information about his deployment to someone he believed would attack his unit in Turkey, and said he didn’t give “a f***” about getting wounded or shot in an ambush.
“It would be another war … I would’ve died successfully … Cause if another 10-year war in the Middle East would definitely leave a mark,” he reportedly wrote on May 17.
According to an alleged FBI affidavit, Melzer confessed later on that he was “prepared to die to facilitate an attack on the Unit, believed his actions were treasonous and considered himself to be a traitor.”
