A soldier in the U.S. Army was charged with attempting to carry out a “mass casualty” terrorist attack on his own unit overseas by leaking sensitive info to the Order of the Nine Angles, a Neo-Nazi and satanic group, the Justice Department announced on Monday.
U.S. Army Pvt. Ethan Melzer, 22, was arrested “for allegedly planning an attack on his U.S. Army unit by sending sensitive details about the unit — including information about its location, movements, and security” to the occult-based extremist group which he secretly joined in 2019. A newly unsealed criminal complaint shows Melzer, a Kentuckian who joined the Army in 2018, has been charged with conspiring and attempting to murder U.S. nationals and military service members, providing and attempting to provide material support to terrorists, and conspiring to murder and maim in a foreign country. The FBI and the U.S. Army thwarted Melzer’s alleged plot in late May, and the bureau arrested him on June 10.
The Southern District of New York is handling the case.
“As alleged, Ethan Melzer, a private in the U.S. Army, was the enemy within,” acting U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss said. “Melzer allegedly attempted to orchestrate a murderous ambush on his own unit by unlawfully revealing its location, strength, and armaments to a neo-Nazi, anarchist, white supremacist group. Melzer allegedly provided this potentially deadly information intending that it be conveyed to jihadist terrorists. As alleged, Melzer was motivated by racism and hatred as he attempted to carry out this ultimate act of betrayal.”
Melzer deployed abroad with his Army unit in October 2019, and, prior to planning his attack, he consumed propaganda from groups including O9A and ISIS, according to the complaint. The FBI seized an ISIS-issued document with a title that included the phrase “Harvest of the Soldiers,” describing attacks and murders of U.S. personnel from his iCloud in April.
Strauss said thanks to the efforts of the agents and detectives of the Joint Terrorism Task Force, partners at the Pentagon and State Department, and SDNY prosecutors, “a hate-fueled terrorist attack against American soldiers has been thwarted.”
Melzer communicated with members of the Order of Nine Angles, typically abbreviated O9A, and the affiliated “RapeWaffen Division” in an attempt to facilitate an attack on his unit, planning what they dubbed a “jihadi attack” to cause a “mass casualty” “killing his fellow service members,” the complaint said.
John Demers, the assistant attorney general for national security, said Meltzer “plotted a deadly ambush on his fellow soldiers in the service of a diabolical cocktail of ideologies laced with hate and violence.” The DOJ official said, “Our women and men in uniform risk their lives for our country, but they should never face such peril at the hands of one of their own.”
The Justice Department said members of O9A have “espoused violent, neo-Nazi, anti-Semitic, and Satanic beliefs, and have expressed admiration for both Nazis, such as Adolf Hitler, and Islamic jihadists, such as Usama Bin Laden.” The agency said, “Members and associates of O9A have also participated in acts of violence, including murders.”
The Southern Poverty Law Center called the Order of Nine Angles “an enigmatic Satanic occult group whose most extreme adherents promote human sacrifice, Nazism and Fascism, and Aryan myths, and have been reported to praise Adolf Hitler and Osama bin Laden.”
The Anti-Defamation League describes the Order of the Nine Angles as “steeped in neo-Nazi themes that praise Adolf Hitler, promote Holocaust denial, and identify Jews as the enemy.” The group’s spiritual leader, Anton Long, is described as “a notorious British neo-Nazi leader with a violent criminal history.”
The Atomwaffen Division, a larger terroristic national socialist and fascist group, draws some of its beliefs from satanism and the occult, and its Siege Culture website has promoted Long’s book, Hostia: Secret Teachings of the Order of Nine Angles.
The book describes occult rites of passage, including stealing communion hosts from Christian — dubbed “Nazarene” — churches for use in a Black Mass, to prove one’s commitment to satanism.
A website purportedly run by members of the group claims that it is “not a neo-nazi Occult group” but rather should be classified “as either a nihilistic Occult movement or as an anarchist Occult movement.”
