Robert Rundo, the co-founder of the far-right Rise Above Movement, is due to appear at Los Angeles County District Court to face charges of involvement in violence after being extradited from Romania.
Rundo, 33, was transported by special agents from the FBI from Romania to the US on Tuesday.
He is the lead defendant in a case in which three California men with ties to the white supremacist extremist group are indicted for planning and participating in riots during political rallies in Huntington Beach on March 25, 2017, in Berkeley on April 15, 2017, and San Bernardino on June 10, 2017.
Rundo allegedly assaulted several people, including a police officer, at two of the rallies.
He is charged along with fellow suspects Robert Boman and Tyler Laube with conspiracy to violate the US Anti-Riot Act.
The US Justice Department said in a statement on Wednesday that according to the indictment, the defendants participated in the conspiracy in various ways, including “engaging in recruitment of RAM [Rise Above Movement] members, coordinating and participating in hand-to-hand and other combat training, travelling to political rallies to attack protesters and other persons, and publishing photographs and videos of violent acts to recruit other members for future events”.
Rundo was located and detained by the Romanian authorities in March this year. He was in possession of an identity card under the name Robert Lazar Pavic.
He fled the US in 2019 and the following year, investigative unit Bellingcat revealed that he was in Serbia, where he posted videos on Telegram of himself and others spraypainting white supremacist messages on walls in Belgrade.
In February 2020, Rundo published an article on a nationalist website in which he wrote that he participated in a march organised by Serbian extremists in front of the US embassy in Belgrade.
Bellingcat wrote that Rundo also participated in a neo-Nazi commemoration in Budapest, Hungary in February 2020, which was attended by 600 far-right extremists from around Europe.
Source : Balkan Insight