Iowa Man Charged With Making Anti-Semitic Threats To Major Jewish Group
A still from a YouTube video about the Nordic Resistance movement. Image by World Jewish Congress/YouTube
(JTA) — An Iowa man was arrested for allegedly threatening a New York-based Jewish organization by phone and email.
Garrett Kelsey, 31, of Cedar Rapids, was charged Tuesday in an Iowa courtroom with one count of transmitting threats to injure a person across state lines, which carries a maximum five-year sentence.
Kelsey, whose Facebook page also included anti-Semitic messages, was upset with the Jewish organization, which is not named in the complaint, for a video it posted about Nordic neo-Nazi groups.
The World Jewish Congress posted a video on YouTube on May 3 titled “7 Facts About the Neo-Nazi Nordic Resistance Movement.”
In late May, Kelsey called what the Justice Department in a statement citing the complaint unsealed in Manhattan federal court identified as the “Victim Organization,” and spoke briefly with one of its employees. He then called back that employee’s number and left a voicemail that said“My people have f—-ing slaughtered your f—-ing people before and we will do it again. And right now, you are giving us incentive to do that … Filthy f—-ing Jews.”
Kelsey also sent the Victim Organization an email demanding it remove the video within three days and apologize to the Asatru community “or we will be taking action against your organization full of degenerates.”
“Asatru” refers to a religious movement recently linked to anti-Semitic and other racist groups, according to the Justice Department.
Kelsey voluntarily met the following day with law enforcement and admitted to sending the threatening email and voicemail to the organization, the statement said.
It’s our birthday and we’re still celebrating!
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news.
This week we celebrate 129 years of the Forward. We’re proud of our origins as a Yiddish print publication serving Jewish immigrants. And we’re just as proud of what we’ve become today: A trusted source of Jewish news and opinion, available digitally to anyone in the world without paywalls or subscriptions.
We’ve helped five generations of American Jews make sense of the news and the world around them — and we aren’t slowing down any time soon.
As a nonprofit newsroom, reader donations make it possible for us to do this work. Support independent, agenda-free Jewish journalism and our board will match your gift in honor of our birthday!
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
