Two neo-Nazis who were recorded plotting a violent attack to bring down the US government have been sentenced to nine years in prison.
Brian Mark Lemley, 35, and Canadian Patrik Jordan Mathews, 29, were members of the Base, a white nationalist terror group.
They pleaded guilty to charges in June.
Although the pair were not found guilty of any violent crimes, the judge determined that their sentences deserved a terror enhancement.
CCTV cameras installed in their home in Delaware captured the men discussing how a gun rally in Richmond, Virginia, last year could be used to orchestrate the downfall of the US government.
As well as destroying railway lines and poisoning water supplies, they planned to break racist mass murderer Dylann Roof out of a prison in Indiana, according to investigators.
US District Judge Theodore Chuang said the recording showed the “virulence” of their desire to kill and overthrow the US government, AP News reported. “The court rejects the notion that this was merely talk among friends,” he added.
Mathews, a Canadian Army reservist, had fled Canada after his name was exposed by the Winnipeg Free Press.
He went on to live in the US state of Georgia where he engaged in military-style training exercises with the group.
Lemley served as a US Army cavalry scout in Iraq before he returned home and was diagnosed with PTSD.
“These sentences make clear that their hateful efforts failed,” said US Attorney Erek Barron, who prosecuted the case.
“These men sought to divide our community based on hate,” he added in a news conference after the sentencing.
The men had previously pleaded guilty to immigration charges related to transporting Mathews, providing a weapon to an illegal alien, and transporting a gun across state lines to commit a crime and obstruction of justice.
The Base, formed in 2018, seeks to create terrorist cells in the US and other countries in an attempt to establish fascist, white ethno-states through a “race war”, say hate-group monitors.
In July, the UK Home Secretary announced that the group would be banned under the nation’s anti-terror laws.
Last year, a BBC investigation found that the group is led by US citizen Rinaldo Nazzaro, who lives in St Petersburg, Russia.
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