Prosecutors requested that Enrique Tarrio, former leader of the far-right Proud Boys of the United States, be sentenced to 33 years in prison for his involvement in the storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
On Tuesday evening Swedish time, he received his punishment. The judge sentenced him to 22 years behind bars.
Enrique Tarrio was not in the US capital when protesters stormed the US Congress, but he is accused of sending text messages to the group’s members before and during the storming.
“Do what must be done,” he is said to have written in an encrypted group chat, according to the AP news agency.
Not in place
He was not there due to his arrest a few days earlier after setting fire to a stolen Black Lives Matter banner.
Tarrio is the last of the convicted Proud Boys members to receive his sentence. Leader Ethan Nordean was sentenced last week to 18 years in prison.
Another leader, Joseph Biggs, has been sentenced to 17 years in prison and a local chairman in Philadelphia, Zachary Rehl, received 15 years in prison, TT writes.
In total, over 1,100 people have been prosecuted for crimes in connection with the storming.
The Storming of the United States Congress
On January 6, 2021, the members of the United States Congress gathered in the Capitol to count the electoral votes of the presidential election and formally appoint Democrat Joe Biden as the winner and next president.
At the same time, tens of thousands of supporters of Donald Trump had gathered in the capital Washington DC for a political mass meeting on the theme “Save the USA”. At the meeting, Trump repeated his false claims of systematic voter fraud and claimed he was the real winner. He urged his supporters to go to the Congress.
“If you don’t get the hell out of you, you won’t have a country anymore,” said the then president.
Parts of the crowd did as he said. The protests turned violent when hundreds of people stormed the congress building and clashed with police. Some made it as far as Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office, as well as into one of the chambers. Parts of the building were vandalized.
At least five people, including a policeman, lost their lives in connection with the attack.
Source: TT