SACRAMENTO, Calif. – A Monroe man and two other environmental activists pleaded not guilty to conspiring to attack government targets on behalf of an extremist group, and bail was set for one of the suspects.
Zachary “Ollie” Jenson, 20, a former Monroe resident, was indicted Wednesday by a federal grand jury. He and co-defendants Eric McDavid, 28, of Foresthill, Calif., and Lauren Weiner, 20, of Philadelphia face five up to 20 years in federal prison if they are convicted of conspiring to use arson or explosives to damage property.
Prosecutors say they had scouted targets and were buying materials to build homemade plastic explosives when they were arrested Jan. 13 outside a Kmart in Auburn, east of Sacramento.
On behalf of the shadowy Earth Liberation Front, they allegedly had planned to attack Nimbus Dam and a nearby fish hatchery on the American River near Sacramento, and the U.S. Forest Service’s Institute of Forest Genetics in Placerville, in the foothills east of Sacramento.
All three denied the allegations at their arraignment Thursday. A status hearing was scheduled for Feb. 14 before U.S. District Judge Morrison England.
Prosecutors said all three should be held as flight risks and a danger to the community. U.S. Magistrate Judge Gregory Hollows ordered Jenson and McDavid held in Sacramento County Jail without bond. But he ruled that Weiner can be released on $1.2 million bail, secured mostly by property her parents own in New York state.
Hollows noted that the government has audio and video surveillance, and written material seized from the suspects, plus the account of a paid FBI informant who lived with the group in a cabin rented and wired by the FBI.
“While this group of defendants may not have possessed a polished expertise in explosives and their use in blowing up targets, there is no doubt from the evidence presented thus far that defendants were deadly serious in their intent to wreak destruction on some type of target which they believed would make a statement in favor of their anti-government, anti-corporate, allegedly pro-environment cause,” Hollows wrote in his 12-page order.
But Hollows found little evidence supporting prosecutors’ contention that the three were affiliated with either ELF or the similarly shadowy Animal Liberation Front, though he said they may have shared the same goals.
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