2023-09-01 10:54:15
The US Justice has sentenced two leaders of the far-right group Proud Boys, Joseph Biggs and Zachary Rehl, to 17 and 15 years in prison for the assault on the Capitol in January 2021.
Four leaders of the Proud Boys, convicted of sedition for the assault on the Capitol
Further
Biggs and Rehl were part of the Proud Boys’ so-called “Self-Defense Ministry,” through which they established a chain of command, recruited members and planned how to execute the attack on the Capitol, the Justice Department said in a statement.
Rehl, Biggs, Ethan Nordean and Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio, of Cuban origin, were found guilty in May of conspiring to commit sedition. The Prosecutor’s Office had requested 30 years in prison against Rehl and 33 against Biggs.
The Department of Justice considered this Thursday that they “led and participated in all major break-ins” in the Capitol building on January 6.
A co-defendant, Dominic Pezzola, was cleared of sedition charges in May but found guilty of assault, resisting a law enforcement officer and theft of government property.
messages calling for violence
The guilty plea has then come after a week of deliberations in a federal court in Washington.
Rehl was the president of the Proud Boys in Philadelphia. According to the local newspaper The Philadelphia Inquirer, he cried this Thursday when he learned of the sentence, apologized to his family and stated that he no longer wants to have anything to do with politics. “I’m done with all this. No more selling lies to other people who don’t care about me,” she said.
Throughout the process, prosecutors showed messages and videos posted by the defendants themselves and other members of the group, calling for violence and revolution against the change in the presidency. According to the accusation, the messages spoke about the need for “war”, the “revolution” and the execution of traitors.
On the day of the assault, the Justice Department said, Rehl pepper-sprayed a police officer in the face and Pezzola broke one of the building’s windows, allowing several people to enter the compound, including Biggs.
Along with other members of the Proud Boys, the statement detailed, Biggs and Rehl posted several videos on social media celebrating the assault, calling it “historic.”
The hearing on Nordean’s conviction is scheduled this Friday at 2:00 p.m. local time and on Tuesday at 2:00 p.m., Tarrio’s is scheduled to be heard.
District Judge Timothy Kelly said Thursday that the Constitution gives citizens “many important rights that Americans have fought and died for,” stressing, according to CNN, that the events of January 6 “broke the tradition of a peaceful transfer of power.
That day some 10,000 people – the majority of Trump supporters – marched towards the Capitol and some 800 stormed the building while Biden’s electoral victory in the 2020 elections was certified. There were five deaths and about 140 injured agents.
Trump himself is charged in Washington for attempts to reverse the result of the 2020 elections. It is one of the four criminal cases against him and in all of them he has pleaded not guilty, the last time this Thursday in Georgia for trying to falsify the result of the presidential elections in that state.
#leaders #ultra #Proud #Boys #group #sentenced #years #prison #assault #Capitol