Militia group leader to be sentenced in 2017 mosque bombing case in US state of Minnesota

The leader of an Illinois anti-government militia group who authorities say masterminded the 2017 bombing of a Minnesota mosque is to be sentenced on Monday for several civil rights and hate crimes in an attack that terrified a community.

Emily Claire Hari, who was previously known as Michael Hari and recently said she is a transgender person, faces a mandatory minimum of 30 years in prison for the attack on Dar al-Farooq Islamic Centre in Bloomington.

Defence attorneys are asking for the minimum, but prosecutors are seeking a life sentence, saying Hari hasn’t taken responsibility for the attack.

“This bomb — the defendant’s bomb — was an act of terror intended to destroy the heart of a community,” prosecutors wrote in papers asking for a life sentence.

While no one was physically hurt, prosecutors wrote, “the defendant irrevocably destroyed the sense of safety and peace that a house of worship is supposed to provide.”

Hari was convicted in December on five counts, including damaging property because of its religious character and obstructing the free exercise of religious beliefs. She did not testify at trial and it was unknown if she would make a statement at sentencing.

Mohamed Omar, executive director at Dar al-Farooq, said he hoped that Hari got a life sentence to show that white supremacy would not be tolerated and people shouldn’t be deprived of the freedom to worship. Omar said he and other community members plan to make victim impact statements at the hearing.

“We just lost a sense of security,” Omar said, adding that Hari’s attack made the mosque a “hot spot” for harassment or intimidation and made people uncomfortable to worship. “It became a struggle for us.”

Several men were gathered at Dar al-Farooq for early morning prayers on August 5, 2017, when a pipe bomb was thrown through the window of an imam’s office. A seven-month investigation led authorities to Clarence, Illinois, a rural community about 190 kilometres south of Chicago, where Hari and co-defendants Michael McWhorter and Joe Morris lived.

Authorities say Hari, 50, led a group called the White Rabbits that included McWhorter, Morris and others and that Hari came up with the plan to attack the mosque. Prosecutors said at trial that she was motivated by hatred for Muslims, citing excerpts from Hari’s manifesto known as The White Rabbit Handbook.

McWhorter and Morris, who portrayed Hari as a father figure, each pleaded guilty to five counts and testified against her. They are awaiting sentencing.

It wasn’t initially clear how the White Rabbits became aware of Dar al-Farooq, but the mosque was in headlines in the years before the attack: Some young people from Minnesota who travelled to Syria to join the militant Islamic State group had worshipped there. Mosque leaders were never accused of any wrongdoing. Hari’s attorneys wrote in court filings that she was a victim of online misinformation about the mosque.

Assistant federal defender Shannon Elkins also said gender dysphoria fuelled Hari’s “inner conflict”, saying she wanted to transition but knew she would be ostracised, so she formed a “rag-tag group of freedom fighters or militiamen” and “secretly looked up ‘sex change’, ‘transgender surgery’ and ‘post-op transgender’ on the internet.”

Prosecutors said gender dysphoria is not an excuse and said using it “to deflect guilt is offensive”.

Hari has raised other issues with the court since she has been in custody. Hours after her conviction, Hari called the Star Tribune and said she was going on a hunger strike, calling the trial a “sham”.

Last week, she sought to delay her sentencing, citing upcoming medical appointments for hormone replacement therapy and to treat what her attorney called a life-threatening allergy, but a judge refused.

And before revealing her issues with gender dysphoria, she also sued authorities at the Minnesota jail where she was housed, saying she objected to having a female conduct a pat-down search for religious reasons. That lawsuit was dismissed.

In their request for a life sentence, prosecutors are seeking several sentencing enhancements, arguing the bombing was a hate crime led by Hari. They also say Hari committed obstruction when she tried to escape from custody during her transfer from Illinois to Minnesota for trial in February 2019. Hari denies trying to flee.

Hari, a former sheriff’s deputy and self-described entrepreneur and watermelon farmer, has written self-published books, including essays on religion, and has floated ideas for a border wall with Mexico. She gained attention on the “Dr Phil” talk show after she fled to the South American nation of Belize in the early 2000s during a custody dispute. She was convicted of child abduction and sentenced to probation.

Hari also sued the federal government, accusing it of cutting in on her food safety business.

Before her 2018 arrest in the mosque bombing, she used the screen name “Illinois Patriot” to post more than a dozen videos to YouTube, most of them anti-government monologues. In one video just days before her arrest, Hari said FBI and local law enforcement were terrorising Clarence and she asked “freedom-loving people everywhere to come and help us.”

Hari, McWhorter and Morris were also charged in a failed November 2017 attack on an abortion clinic in Champaign, Illinois. Plea agreements for McWhorter and Morris say the men participated in an armed home invasion in Indiana, and the armed robberies or attempted armed robberies of two Walmart stores in Illinois.

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