Three members of a Kansas militia group were charged Friday with plotting to bomb an apartment building filled with Somali immigrants in the western Kansas meatpacking town of Garden City.
Acting U.S. Attorney Tom Beall said Curtis Wayne Allen, 49; Patrick Eugene Stein, 47; and Gavin Wayne Wright, 49, are members of a group calling itself the Kansas Security Force.
The arrests were the culmination of an eight-month FBI investigation that took agents “deep into a hidden culture of hatred and violence,” Beall said. Federal law enforcement officials say the men intended to use four large car bombs to destroy an apartment building where about 120 people lived -- most of them from Somalia.
The men, who were arrested in Liberal on Friday morning, performed surveillance of the apartment building and prepared a manifesto, Beall said. If convicted, the men could be sentenced to up to life in federal prison without parole.
According to the criminal complaint the suspects were motivated by “a hatred for Muslims, individuals of Somali descent, and immigrants,” reports CBS News correspondent Chip Reid.
