Former Manitoba Reservist Charged

US authorities have accused him of planning violent acts:

Quote:

A former army reservist's right to express his views, however repugnant, doesn't trump the risk he might try to escape justice, a U.S. District Court judge declared Wednesday as he ordered accused white supremacist Patrik Mathews of Beausejour, Man., to remain behind bars.

Judge Timothy Sullivan said Mathews, 27, is in the country illegally, has no ties to the United States and is facing serious charges that stem from his role in an alleged plot to sow violence, death and racial unrest, including at a massive pro-gun rally earlier this week in Virginia — a plot Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas Windom described in court as domestic terrorism.

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Prosecutors allege in documents filed in court that Mathews videotaped himself advocating for killing people, poisoning water supplies and derailing trains. They have also alleged that Mathews and two other alleged co-conspirators and Base members, had been planning to violently disrupt Monday's gun-rights rally in Richmond, Va., in hopes of inciting civil war.

Defence counsel Joseph Balter acknowledged early in the hearing that his client, if released, would be immediately subject to an immigration warrant. But he argued that the government's motion to keep Mathews in custody was predicated more on the content of "odious" and "repugnant" sentiments expressed in the video than on the potential danger he potentially posed.

The charges he is facing "would not, by themselves, support a detention order," Balter said. "One man's domestic terrorism can be another man's exercising of his First Amendment rights."

The detention memo filed Tuesday details how investigators used a hidden camera and microphone, in a home in Delaware, to record Mathews talking about the Virginia rally as a "boundless" opportunity.

"All you gotta do is start making things go wrong and if Virginia can spiral out to [expletive] full-blown civil war," the documents quote Mathews as saying.

This after he went missing and his truck was found near the border last spring.