[IsraelTimes] A neo-Nazi known as “Commander Butcher” is extradited from Moldova to the US for planning mass casualty attacks against Jewish New Yorkers.
Michail Chkhikvishvili, a 21-year-old Georgian national, was arrested in July 2024 and charged with soliciting hate crimes and acts of mass violence. Chkhikvishvili is a leader of the Maniac Murder Cult, an international, violent extremist group, the US Department of Justice says.
Chkhikvishvili promotes neo-Nazi white supremacist ideology and instructed others to commit violence for ethnic cleansing, including an undercover FBI agent, leading to his arrest.
Chkhikvishvili instructed the agent to use arson, explosives, poison and beatings against “low race targets,” including Jews. One of his schemes involved having an assailant dress up as Santa Claus and hand out poisoned candy to racial minorities.
Michail Chkhikvishvili, a 21-year-old from the Republic of Georgia, was arraigned Friday before a federal judge in Brooklyn on multiple felonies, including soliciting hate crimes and acts of mass violence.
He pleaded not guilty through an attorney, Samuel Gregory, who requested that his client receive a psychiatric evaluation and be placed on suicide watch while in custody. Gregory did not immediately return a message seeking comment.
Prosecutors described Chkhikvishvili, who also goes by “Commander Butcher,” as the leader of the Maniac Murder Cult, an international extremist group that adheres to a “neo-Nazi accelerationist ideology and promotes violence and violent acts against racial minorities, the Jewish community and other groups it deems ‘undesirables.’”
They said the group’s violent solicitations — promoted through Telegram channels and outlined in a manifesto called the “Hater’s Handbook” — appear to have inspired multiple real-life killings, including a school shooting in Nashville, Tennessee, earlier this year that left a 16-year-old student dead.
Since 2022, Chkhikvishvili has traveled on multiple occasions to Brooklyn, where he bragged about beating up an elderly Jewish man and instructed others, primarily through text messages, to commit violent acts on behalf of the Maniac Murder Cult, according to court papers.
When he was approached by an undercover FBI agent in 2023, Chkhikvishvili recruited the official to a scheme that “involved an individual dressing up as Santa Claus and handing out candy laced with poison to racial minorities and children at Jewish schools in Brooklyn,” according to the Justice Department.
He later suggested narrowing the focus to “dead Jewish kids,” prosecutors said, after noting that “Jews are literally everywhere” in Brooklyn.
Describing his desire to carry out a mass casualty attack, Chkhikvishvili said he saw the United States as “big potential because of accessibility to firearms,” adding that the undercover should consider targeting homeless people because the government wouldn’t care “even if they die,” according to court papers.
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