Die Ermittlungen liefen seit Jänner, die Festnahme durch das FBI fand erst vergangene Woche statt. Der Beschuldigte soll bereits gestanden haben. Wenige Tage nach dem Sturm auf das US-Kapitol am 6. Jänner warnte Amazon seine Angestellten in Datencentern vor Bombendrohungen durch Rechtsextreme. Auf einem rechten Message-Board postete ein Nutzer namens Seth P. unter dem Pseudonym Dionysus, dass er zwar “kein dämlicher Selbstmordattentäter sei. Aber im Wissen, dass er “den Bösen dieser Welt” nicht erlaube, seine amerikanischen Mitbürger unfair zu behandeln, wolle er selig als junger Mann sterben. Laut der Staatsanwaltschaft habe er sich in den folgenden Monaten auf Amazon konzentriert – und geplant, ein Rechenzentrum in Virginia zu zerstören. Das FBI nahm den 28-Jährigen vergangenen Donnerstag in Gewahrsam. Laut Gerichtsdokumenten gestand er seine Pläne bereits während der Verhaftung. Der Konzern geriet in den USA ins Visier Rechtsextremer, nachdem er am 9. Jänner angekündigt hatte, die rechte Twitter-Alternative Parler nicht mehr auf den eigenen Servern hosten zu wollen. “Klingt nach Krieg”, schrieb daraufhin ein Parler-User in einem Beitrag, den ein “Buzzfeed News”-Redakteur entdeckte. “Es wäre schade, wenn jemand mit Sprengstoffausbildung einigen AWS-Rechenzentren einen Besuch abstatten würde.”
via standard: Rechtsextremist plante offenbar, Amazon-Rechenzentren in den USA zu sprengen
siehe auch: A Far-Right Extremist Allegedly Plotted to Blow Up Amazon Data Centers. The FBI arrested the suspect in Texas after he purchased explosives from an undercover agent. IN THE DAYS after the January 6 riot on Capitol Hill, one man struck an alarming note on the MyMilitia.com message board. “I’m not a dumbass suicide bomber,” he posted under the handle Dionysus. But he would “happily die a young man knowing that I didn’t allow the evils in this world to continue unjustly treating my fellow Americans so disrespectfully.” Over the following months, prosecutors say, that man, whose real name was Seth Pendley, focused his anger at Amazon, concocting a plot to destroy an Amazon Web Services data center in northern Virginia with C-4 plastic explosives. The Federal Bureau of Investigation took Pendley, 28, into custody on Thursday; court documents say that he admitted to orchestrating the plan at the time of his arrest. The case offers another unsettling revelation into how the increasingly heated rhetoric from the far-right has translated into real-world threats. How did Dionysus want his “little experiment” to end, another MyMilitia.com member asked? “Death.” Pendley’s posts came at a time when Amazon was under intense scrutiny from the far right. The company announced on January 9 that it would cut ties with Parler, the “free-speech” social network that had become a haven for harassment and extremism and hosted many participants in the January 6 attack. “Sounds like war,” wrote one Parler member in a post spotted by Buzzfeed News editor John Paczkowski. “It would be a pity if someone with explosives training were to pay a visit to some AWS data centers – the locations of which are public knowledge.” Two days later, Insider reported that an AWS executive sent a memo to employees urging vigilance in the wake of the Parler ban. “If you see something, say something—no situation or concern is too small or insignificant,” wrote Chris Vonderhaar, AWS VP of infrastructure. In public and private posts online, court documents say, Pendley claimed to have been at the Capitol on January 6, but not to have entered the building. He expressed disappointment that his fellow protesters weren’t more aggressive. “I feel like we all went into this with the intentions of getting very little done,” Dionysus wrote on MyMilitia.com. “How much did you expect to do when we all willingly go in unarmed.” The MyMilitia.com posts were concerning enough that someone tipped off the FBI; investigators subsequently obtained access to Pendley’s Facebook messages through a search warrant and began physical surveillance of his house in Wichita Falls, Texas. “We are indebted to the concerned citizen who came forward to report the defendant’s alarming online rhetoric,” acting US attorney Prerak Shah said in a statement. “In flagging his posts to the FBI, this individual may have saved the lives of a number of tech workers.”
