A US Coast Guard officer has been arrested on suspicion of planning a terror attack, court documents show.<\/p>\n
Police found a cache of weapons and ammunition at the Maryland home of Christopher Paul Hasson.<\/p>\n
The self-proclaimed white nationalist had drawn up a list of targets including prominent Democratic politicians, according to prosecutors.<\/p>\n
He is said to have drawn inspiration from the Norwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik.<\/p>\n
“The defendant intends to murder innocent civilians on a scale rarely seen in this country,” US District Attorney Robert Hur said in the court documents.<\/p>\n
“The defendant is a domestic terrorist, bent on committing acts dangerous to human life that are intended to affect governmental conduct.”<\/p>\n
Prosecutors said that in a draft email from June 2017 Mr Hasson wrote: “I am dreaming of a way to kill almost every last person on the earth. I think a plague would be most successful but how do I acquire the needed Spanish flu, botulism, anthrax, not sure yet but will find something.”<\/p>\n
US media say the 49-year-old is a lieutenant at Coast Guard headquarters in Washington and lives in the Maryland suburb of Silver Spring.<\/p>\n
The Coast Guard confirmed that a member of the service had been arrested but gave no further details.<\/p>\n
Fifteen guns and more than 1,000 rounds of ammunition were found in Mr Hasson’s basement flat along with illegal drugs, the attorney’s office said.<\/p>\n
A list of possible targets included Democratic House speaker Nancy Pelosi and Democratic Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer as well as media personalities including MSNBC’s Chris Hayes and Joe Scarborough.<\/p>\n
Since 2017 Mr Hasson had studied parts of a manifesto by Anders Breivik on how to amass firearms and compile a list of targets, prosecutors allege.<\/p>\n
Breivik murdered 77 people in 2011 in two terror attacks. He killed eight people with a car bomb in central Oslo and then shot dead 69 others, many of them teenagers, at a Labour Party camp.<\/p>\n
Mr Hasson was arrested on Friday on weapons and drugs charges and is due to appear in court on Thursday.<\/p>\n
Source: bbc.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"