Four members of the American far-right group Proud Boys involved in the storming the capitol on January 6, 2021, they were sentenced this Thursday for “sedition”, the most serious accusation charged for this attack, local media reported.
a court of Washington had tried five members of the Proud Boys for having stormed the headquarters of Congress along with other supporters of former Republican President Donald Trump when legislators were preparing to certify the victory of the Democrat Joe Biden in the 2020 elections.
The jury disagreed on the “sedition” charge for the fifth defendant, but all five were found guilty of obstructing the work of Congress, the AFP news agency reported.
Since the assault on January 6, 2021, more than 950 Trump supporters were arrested and charged with wreaking havoc in Congress.
In other trials, concluded in November and January, six members of another far-right militia, the Oath Keepers, were convicted of sedition, punishable by up to 20 years in prison.
This position involves planning the use of force to oppose the government. It is difficult to test and is rarely used.
The trial of the five members of the Proud Boys, including one of the bosses, Henry “Enrique” Tarrio, began in December. Tarrio, the former national president of the Proud Boys, was not in Washington on Jan. 6 but was suspected of leading the attack and was also convicted of “sedition.”
According to local media, on January 4, 2021, two days before the assault, the far-right had been arrested for burning a flag of the Black Lives Matter movement that he had torn from a historic church of the African-American community during a previous mobilization.
Due to this incident, he was denied access to the capital.
The other four were accused of having directly participated in the assault on the Capitol. In a video, one of them, Dominic Pezzola, can be seen with a riot shield (stolen from the police) and breaking a window of the Capitol.
Defense lawyers for the far-right activists have denied there was a plot to attack the Capitol or slow down congressional work, and even a lawyer for Tarrio tried to divert responsibility towards Trump, arguing that the former president promoted the attack when he urged the crowd near the White House to “fight like hell.”
Source: Ambito
