A Georgian national known as “Commander Butcher,” linked to an attempted distribution of poisoned candy to children on New Year’s Eve 2023, appeared in federal court in Brooklyn on Friday.
Michail Chkhikvishvili, commander of the white supremacist “Maniac Murder Cult,” was extradited to the U.S. from Moldova on Thursday after being held in the Eastern European country for nearly a year, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced in a press release Friday.
The accused neo-Nazi’s 2023 plot to distribute poisoned candy via an accomplice dressed up as Santa Claus was specifically targeted at racial minorities and children attending a Jewish school in Brooklyn. According to the DOJ’s release, Chkhikvishvili also recruited his cult members to commit bombings against Jewish people and racial minorities.
The Georgian national is allegedly tied to a school shooting in January, where a 17-year-old gunman livestreamed his attack on Antioch High School in Nashville, Tennessee, before committing suicide, according to 6ABC Action News. Chkhikvishvili is also alleged in connection with an August 2024 knife attack in Turkey and an April 2022 murder in Romania, Action News reported.
United States Attorney General Pam Bondi called Chkhikvishvili a “a white supremacist, [who] recruited others to participate in a violent campaign of hatred against racial minorities and the Jewish community and to engage in the mass killing of children and others in these communities using poison, suicide bombs, firearms, arson fires, and vehicle explosions,” in another Friday press release from the DOJ.
FBI Director Kash Patel thanked authorities in Moldova for complying with the extradition in X post on Friday.
Christopher Raia, FBI Assistant Director in the Counterterrorism Division, said that the extradition, “is a clear sign the FBI, our Joint Terrorism Task Force, and law enforcement partners are committed to protecting our nation and city and will bring any individual desiring to enact racially motivated violence to justice,” in the DOJ’s press release.
NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch thanked the NYPD, the FBI, the U.S. Attorney’s Office, and the DOJ, saying, “This extradition demonstrates the reach and the determination of American law enforcement agencies to track down the most dangerous and depraved of criminals,” according to the release.
“This case is a stark reminder of the kind of terrorism we face today,” Bondi said in the release, decrying “online networks plotting unspeakable acts of violence against children, families, and the Jewish community in pursuit of a depraved, extremist ideology.”
A deputy spokesperson for the DOJ’s Office of Public Affairs told the Daily Caller News Foundation that Chkhikvishvili “was arrested in July 2024 before his successful extradition to the United States this week,” and referred the DCNF to the DOJ’s Friday press release.
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