SACRAMENTO, Calif. - A federal jury found a 29-year-old environmental activist guilty Thursday of conspiring to burn down or blow up a northern California dam, a genetics lab, cell phone towers and other targets.
Eric McDavid of Foresthill, Calif., faces up to 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine for what FBI agents said was as an ecoterrorist plot in the name of the Earth Liberation Front, a shadowy, loose-knit group that has claimed credit for arsons throughout the West.
McDavid and two others were arrested in January 2006 after buying bottles of bleach, a car battery, potassium chloride and other items prosecutors said were being used to build plastic explosives.
The Nimbus Dam 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, were among the suspected targets.
McDavid’s two co-defendants pleaded guilty last year and testified against McDavid. Jurors listened to them and testimony from an FBI informant before deliberating for 11 hours and returning the guilty verdict.
McDavid’s attorney argued he was a victim of entrapment because the informant provided money and help to buy the items.
U.S. Attorney McGregor W. Scott called the verdict a message that the ELF “is misdirected in its tactics and a danger to the community.”
“Eric McDavid and others like him choose to put innocent civilian lives in jeopardy for the sake of advancing their own extreme views,” Scott said in a news release.
–news.yahoo
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