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By Keith Coffman
DENVER (Reuters) – A confessed white supremacist was sentenced to 19-1 / 2 years in prison on Friday after pleading guilty months ago to a federal hate crimes case stemming from a botched plot to bomb a historic synagogue of Colorado in 2019.
Richard Holzer, 28, appeared in a federal courtroom in Denver for a conviction that ended a secret FBI investigation into a plan to blow up the Emanuel Temple in Pueblo, Colo., The second oldest synagogue in the ‘State.
Although the plot was thwarted, US District Judge Raymond Moore said Holzer sought “to terrorize the Jewish community” of Pueblo, a town of 112,000 people about 160 km south of Denver.
“This is one of the most vulgar … perverse crimes that can be committed against an entire group of people,” Moore said in imposing the sentence sought by prosecutors.
Holzer declined to speak at the hearing.
The defendant pleaded guilty in October to one count of attempting to obstruct religious services by force and one count of attempting to destroy a building used in interstate commerce, according to his plea agreement.
Holzer, who lived in Pueblo, was arrested in November 2019 following an undercover injection by federal agents tracking down his social media posts, in which he professed hatred of Jews, according to a warrant affidavit of FBI shutdown.
Impersonating racist comrades, undercover officers contacted Holzer and later met him as he raised the idea of blowing up the synagogue, the affidavit said. In the end, officers provided him with inert homemade bombs and sticks of dynamite before arresting him, according to court documents.
The judge dismissed defense lawyers’ arguments that Holzer had renounced his racist views, noting that since his arrest he had contacted other white supremacists and continued to invoke Nazi imagery.
“The idea that he turned a corner is fantasy,” Moore said.
(Reporting by Keith Coffman in Denver; Editing by Steve Gorman and Sonya Hepinstall)
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