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Teenager ordered to write book report after plotting synagogue attack.
A book report and probation were handed down to a thirteen-year-old who confessed to plotting an attack on a synagogue.
The teen’s September arrest followed his plot to open fire on Temple Israel in Canton, Ohio.
A book report on Swiss diplomat Carl Lutz, who rescued thousands of Jews from Nazi persecution, was assigned to him.
According to media outlets in the United States, the juvenile was also given a year of probation.
According to local media sources, the boy had already entered a “true” plea to misdemeanor counts of causing panic and disorderly conduct, which is the same as being guilty in family court.
Due to his young age, he was not identified.
According to local media sources, Judge Jim James ordered the youngster to attend treatment and banned him from having unsupervised internet use.
The youngster was reported to the police in early September, before to the 7 October attack on Israel by Hamas, which has increased security worries for the Jewish community, according to a sheriff’s incident report.
The FBI was alerted to “threats and plans to burn down and shoot up the Temple Israel” by employees of the gaming social site Discord.
Posts “included plans and maps of the synagogue made possibly by the suspect” and another unidentified Washington state resident were featured in the posts, according to the study.
On September 7th, the boy was interviewed by the FBI and the local sheriffs.
A number of anti-Semitic and political organizations on Discord were mentioned by the youth as his affiliation, according to the sheriffs.
George Maier, sheriff of Stark County, stated: “We stand by a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to threats made against our community.”
The National Threat Operations Centre of the FBI was notified about the boy’s suspicious activity by Discord, which it acknowledged having observed.
According to John Redgrave, VP of trust and safety at Discord, “and when we see it, we take immediate action” to remove hate speech and violent extremism from the network.
“It is a top priority for Discord to ensure a safe experience for our users,” according to him.
Jewish anti-extremism and advocacy organization the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) expressed its “horrified” shock at the accusations and expressed its hope that this would serve as a “teachable moment” in the community.
“Hate and threats on social media, as in real life, cannot and will not be tolerated,” according to the ADL.
Neither the adolescent’s access to weapons nor the status of the attack plot were disclosed.
The Swiss ambassador Mr. Lutz, who in 1944 granted credentials to hundreds of Jewish families residing in Budapest under the Nazi occupation, will now be the subject of his report.
According to historians, he may have saved as many as 62,000 lives. However, upon his return to Switzerland after the war, he was censured for exceeding his authority and was thereafter ostracized.
