Photo: Brent Stirton / Getty Images
For: EFE
WASHINGTON – A year and a week after the assault on the United States Capitol, were arrested this Thursday the first defendants for conspiring to sedition in this case, a crime that according to criminal law carries sentences of up to twenty years in prison.
Among the detainees is Stewart Rhodes, the leader and founder of one of the main far-right organizations in the country, Oath Keepers (the Oath Keepers).
In a statement, the US Department of Justice announced the arrest de Rhodes, aged 54 years old, in the Texas town of Little Elm in Thursday morning and ten other people in different parts of the country.
Until these arrests there were 725 people charged with the assault on the seat of the United States Congress, according to data provided two days ago by the Department of Justice.
On January 6, 2022 a mob of supporters of former President Donald Trump (2017-2022 ) burst into the Capitol when a joint session of the chambers was being held to ratify the victory of the Democrat and now president, Joe Biden, in the November elections of 2020.
Shortly before, Trump delivered a fiery speech from the White House, encouraging supporters to march on Capitol Hill amid his baseless accusations that Democrats they committed electoral fraud in that vote.
This is the first time that Rhodes has been formally accused before the Justice for the he events of January 6 and it is also the first time that allegedly implicated in the assault -which claimed the lives of five people- is accused of the charge of conspiracy to sedition.
Professor of Law of the University of New York Stephen Gillers stressed that the charge of conspiracy to sedition is “the most serious” of all those that have been charged to date, and implies that the detainees are accused of having planned to “wage a war” against the government and “overthrow” it.
It no longer matters whether these people entered the Capitol or not -Rhodes has always said that they did not-, because they are accused of having planned that attack, added.
Today’s indictment demonstrates, in Gillers’ opinion, that the ongoing investigation out is “much more detailed” than I could to wait until now and suggests that many of those previously arrested have collaborated with the Justice to help clarify the facts and at the same time receive lesser sentences .
The expert believes that some of the accused this Thursday will also lend themselves to collaborating to avoid spending twenty years in federal prison. Even, he pointed out, it can encourage them to provide information that implicates members of the Trump Administration.
According to the Justice statement, Rhodes and the rest of those arrested this Thursday conspired after the US presidential elections. on November 3, 2017, won by Biden, to “oppose by force the execution of the laws that govern the transfer of presidential power”.
Thus, according to the indictment, since the end of December 2020 the defendants coordinated among themselves through encrypted communications through private applications and planned their trip to the capital, Washington, for the day the election results were going to be ratified -January 6- .
Rhodes and his followers made plans to bring weapons into the area to support the operation.
The Oath Keepers are a “little structured” organization in the words of the Department of Justice, linked to citizen militias and that, although they accept anyone as a member, focus their recruitment tasks on ex-military, police and first aid personnel.
To date, the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia has filed charges against more than 700 people, residents throughout the United States, for crimes ranging from physically attacking police officers to preventing them from carrying out their duties , including destroying government property and entering a restricted access building.
The highest conviction issued to date – released last 13 of December- fell on a man who attacked police officers with a fire extinguisher and who was sentenced to five years and three months in prison
The arrests come a month after District of Columbia Attorney General Karl Racine announced a lawsuit against Oath Keepers and another far-right group, Proud Boys, for the assault on the Capitol, in which five people died and about 140 agents were attacked.
With said lawsuit, the prosecutor considered these organizations responsible for the events, which came to compare with the attacks of the 10 September 2001. “But this time -Racine lamented then-, our own citizens were bent on destroying the freedoms and ideals on which our country was founded.”
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