Leader of neo-Nazi group plotted attacks on Jews and other minority groups in New York City.By World Israel News StaffA Georgian neo-Nazi leader who plotted to poison Jewish children in New York City was sentenced Wednesday to 15 years in federal prison, US prosecutors said.Michail Chkhikvishvili, 22, also known as “Commander Butcher,” was sentenced in federal court in Brooklyn by US District Judge Carol Bagley Amon after pleading guilty in November to soliciting hate crimes and distributing instructions to make bombs and ricin.He had been extradited from Moldova to the United States in May 2025.Federal prosecutors said Chkhikvishvili was a leader of Maniac Murder Cult, an international white supremacist extremist group also known as “Maniacs Murder Cult,” “Maniacs: Cult of Killing,” “MKY,” “MMC” and “MKU.” The Justice Department said the group promotes neo-Nazi ideology and violence against racial minorities, Jews and others it deems “undesirables.”“The defendant is not sentenced because of his warped views,” Amon said in court. “He is being sentenced for his calls to action.”Prosecutors said Chkhikvishvili used Telegram and other online platforms to recruit followers and encourage mass violence. Since around September 2021, they said, he distributed a manifesto titled “Hater’s Handbook,” which encouraged mass casualty attacks, including school shootings.The New York plot began in November 2023, when Chkhikvishvili solicited an undercover FBI employee, whom he believed to be a recruit, to carry out violent attacks.Prosecutors said the original plan called for someone dressed as Santa Claus to distribute poisoned candy to racial minorities in New York City on New Year’s Eve.By January 2024, according to the Justice Department, Chkhikvishvili had shifted the plan to target “the Jewish community, Jewish schools, and Jewish children in Brooklyn with poison.” Prosecutors said he sent detailed manuals on making and mixing lethal poisons and gases, including ricin.Assistant Attorney General John A. Eisenberg said Chkhikvishvili “repeatedly called for the murder of innocent civilians, including children, and schemed to attack and terrorize Jewish communities and racial minorities in the United States.”“Chkhikvishvili, for example, tried to recruit a supposed associate to dress up as Santa Claus and pass out poisoned candy to minority children,” Eisenberg said. “Today’s sentence takes a monster off our streets and protects our communities at least for a time.”Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said the case showed that online extremists could not evade prosecution.“The defendant plotted abhorrent acts of antisemitic and racially motivated violence,” Dhillon said. “Individuals who plan and encourage this violence will not find refuge in the dark corners of the Internet. Together, with our law enforcement partners, we will relentlessly pursue these criminals, and hold them accountable.”US Attorney Joseph Nocella Jr. for the Eastern District of New York said Chkhikvishvili “intended to hurt and kill children in the Jewish community and in other minority communities in New York City.”“Thanks to our incredible law enforcement partners, he did not succeed and will now face justice for his cowardly acts,” Nocella said. “Today’s sentence sends a strong message to hateful extremists, wherever you are, who seek to spread fear through unspeakable violence: we will find you and prosecute you to the fullest extent of the law.”The Justice Department said Chkhikvishvili’s propaganda was linked to violence outside New York. Prosecutors said a 17-year-old student who killed one person and wounded another at Antioch High School in Nashville in January 2025 claimed he was acting on behalf of Maniac Murder Cult, and that his manifesto mentioned Chkhikvishvili.Authorities also linked the group’s propaganda to an August 2024 attack in Eskisehir, Turkey, where a man wearing Nazi symbols livestreamed himself stabbing five people outside a mosque. The Justice Department said the attacker’s manifesto referred to Chkhikvishvili and his violent statements.“As a leader of the white supremacist group ‘Maniac Murder Cult,’ this defendant concocted hate-fueled, mass-casualty plans and inspired others to commit attacks based on his vile rhetoric,” NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch said. “This violent extremist’s intentions were clear: harm and kill as many Jews and racial groups as possible.”Tisch said the case was stopped through cooperation among the NYPD, FBI and federal prosecutors.“But thanks to the work of our NYPD investigators, along with the FBI and the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York, he is now off our streets and being held accountable for his hateful crimes,” she said.The post Neo-Nazi leader gets 15 years for plot to poison Jewish children in Brooklyn appeared first on World Israel News.