OFF THE WIRE
ST. CLOUD --
Seven members of a white supremacist group, called American Front, have been arrested in Osceola County.
The arrests were the work of several law enforcement organizations, including the FBI. News 13 spoke with the Southern Poverty Law Center, which has a hate watch committee. They said American Front is very dangerous and had plans to blow up several buildings and kill a lot of people.
“These arrests over the last few days are in fact connected to arrests that were made in March of this year by the sheriff's office in Orlando of six people who are involved with something called the Outlaws Motorcycle Club and another neo-Nazi group called the First SS Calvary Brigade Motorcycle Division. That's a small neo-Nazi group that's pretty well-known to us,” said Mark Potok, with the Southern Poverty Law Center.
The suspects are charged with paramilitary training, teaching and demonstrating, attempt to shoot into an occupied dwelling and evidence of prejudices while committing offense. Potok said this is a group they've been watching.
“What we do know is that there are a lot of allegations of a major conspiracy that involve killing people, possibly blowing up buildings and more,” Potok said.
This group started in California in the 1980s but died down in the 1990s after things became more violent.
The group's founder, David Lynch, was murdered last year. Since then, Florida has been the hot bed of action for this group. One of the men arrested, Marcus Faella, lead the group for a short time.
http://www.cfnews13.com/content/news/cfnews13/news/article.html/content/news/articles/cfn/2012/5/7/_7_arrested_on_hate_.html
