Army private plans to kill Soldiers for his satanic cult
June 27, 2022A 24 year old Army private from Louisville, Kentucky pleaded guilty last week to planning to kill Soldiers from his unit in an attack that was foiled in 2020. The intended attack was to be carried out in the name of a cult called the Order of the Nine Angles.
Private Ethan Phelan Melze’s guilty plea could mean that he faces up to 45 years in prison for attempting to kill U.S. service members, supporting terrorists, and knowingly distributing sensitive information for treasonous reasons.
According to court documents, prior to joining the Army in late 2018, Melzer belonged to a violent extremist group called the Order of Nine Angles, or O9A. Federal authorities say the group is a United Kingdom based cult that describes itself as “traditional Satanism”.
Army veteran Ethan Phelan Melzer began consuming propaganda from multiple extremist groups including the Islamic State on encrypted online forums after he was deployed to Italy in October 2019 as a member of the 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team.https://t.co/Gyg2rYVqgt
— Stars and Stripes (@starsandstripes) June 25, 2022
According to Melzer’s attorney, the Army private denies being a O9A member and said after his arrest that his claims of affiliation were “bluster — falsities designed to impress the people he was communicating with online.” Attorneys argued that Melzer’s initial curiosity about the group were snuffed out and he found them to be “weird” and “pretty much a cult”.
Melzer’s statement that his beliefs and O9A’s were “polar opposite” is contradicted by a claim by authorities that Melzer shot a marijuana dealer in the arm in 2017 as an attempt to self-initiate into the group.
Authorities also argued that Melzer joined the Army on behalf of the satanic, neo-Nazi, anti-Semitic group to receive training on lethality, recruit others, and subvert the military.
Related: Airman arrested for alleged role in attack on US base in Syria
In May of 2020, Melzer came down on orders that would move him to Italy to provide force protection at a sensitive and isolated military post. Melzer then began reporting sensitive information back to O9A and suggested plotting an attack on his unit.
According to authorities, the attack was intended to create a “mass casualty” and “essentially cripple” the element's “fire-teams.”
Sentencing is scheduled for January.
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