Las Vegas man pleads guilty in charge related to alleged synagogue bombing plot
Conor Climo Image by TODAY/YouTube
By Ron Kampeas February 11, 2020
(JTA) — A man from Las Vegas, Nevada who worked as a security guard pleaded guilty to illegal possession of a firearm, related to charges that he planned to bomb a local synagogue or a bar that caters to the LBGTQ community.
Conor Climo, 23, appeared Monday in a Las Vegas court to possessing the components of a destructive device. He faces a maximum sentence of ten years, but The Associated Press said he was likely to get two to three years when he is sentenced in May. He will receive mental health treatment in prison.
Climo was having encrypted online conversations with individuals who identified with a white supremacist extremist organization, Feuerkrieg Division, an offshoot of the white supremacist extremist group Atomwaffen Division. At least one Atomwaffen member has been implicated in an allegedly anti-Semitic murder.
Climo regularly used derogatory racial, anti-Semitic, and homosexual slurs. He communicated with one undercover online contact and an FBI confidential informant.
According to the complaint, he discussed attacking a Las Vegas synagogue and making Molotov cocktails and improvised explosive devices, and discussed conducting surveillance on a bar he believed catered to the LGBTQ community. The synagogue was not identified.
A Justice Department statement said Climo’s arrest was the result of the Disruption and Early Engagement Programs, a national strategy to disrupt potential mass shootings and other rapidly mobilizing threats and the need to implement timely, effective and efficient responses.”
The post Las Vegas man pleads guilty to arms charge in relation to alleged synagogue bombing plot appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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.
