2 Charged with inciting violence and promoting hate crimes worldwide – DNyuz

Two people who federal prosecutors say led a transnational terrorist group through the messaging app Telegram have been charged with promoting violent and deadly hate crimes around the world, authorities said Monday.

The two, Dallas Humber, 34, of Elk Grove, California, and Matthew Allison, 37, of Boise, Idaho, are accused of running the group Terrorgram Collective through a network of channels on Telegram, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of California.

Ms. Humber and Mr. Allison incited people motivated by hatred or prejudice to carry out violent attacks or plot to destroy infrastructure, prosecutors said in a news release.

At least three hate-motivated crimes, including a shooting at an LGBTQ bar in Slovakia, a stabbing at a mosque in Turkey and a plot to attack a power grid in New Jersey, were linked to guidelines shared by Ms. Humber and Mr. Allison, the indictment in the case said.

The two also created and shared a list of federal officials to be killed — including a U.S. senator, a U.S. district judge and a former federal prosecutor — adding their photos and addresses. (Authorities did not name the officials, and there is no indication in the charging documents that a killing occurred.)

In a statement, Attorney General Merrick Garland said the arrests were a warning to online hate groups that “committing hateful crimes in the darkest corners of the internet will not hide you, and provoking terrorist attacks from behind a screen will not protect you.”

Noa Oren, a lawyer representing Ms. Humber, declined to comment Monday. It was not immediately clear whether Mr. Allison had legal representation.

According to the indictment, Ms. Humber and Mr. Allison joined Terrorgram in 2019 and began leading the group in 2022, after a previous leader was arrested and another learned he was under investigation.

Terrorgram is a far-right Telegram network where white supremacists and neo-fascists share videos, messages, and instructions encouraging violence against people of color, the LGBTQ community, and government officials.

Ms. Humber and Mr. Allison managed the group’s channels and chats, where they created and distributed videos and messages praising white supremacist attacks, as well as publications detailing how to carry out terrorist attacks, investigators said.

Ms. Humber told members of a group chat that she would recite a manifesto for anyone who would carry out attacks and kill people, according to the charging documents. The chat included one person who ultimately shot three people, killing two of them, at an LGBTQ bar in Slovakia, according to the complaint. Ms. Humber and Mr. Allison did the honors, and Ms. Humber made an audiobook of his manifesto, prosecutors said.

Investigators also found that the two discussed Terrorgram’s connections to a person who stabbed five people outside a mosque in Turkey and praised the attack, the indictment said. In another case, court records say, a person who planned an attack on a power plant in New Brunswick, N.J., shared information with an undercover federal agent about how to carry out the attack, including a publication created by Mr. Allison and Ms. Humber.

The two promoted accelerationism, an ideology rooted in white supremacy that calls for attacks on critical infrastructure to collapse society and create a white ethnostate, according to legal documents.

Ms. Humber and Mr. Allison were each charged with 15 counts of inciting hate crimes, doxxing and creating a hit list of federal officials and politicians, making threats, providing bomb-making instructions, and conspiring to support terrorists. The most serious charges carry a maximum prison sentence of 20 years.

Last month, Telegram founder Pavel Durov was arrested by French authorities on a variety of charges related to his alleged complicity in illegal activities on the app. Several terrorist and criminal groups around the world, including ISIS, Hamas and drug traffickers, use Telegram’s encrypted messages to communicate.

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