Man Charged With Threatening To Kill Supreme Court Justices | EUROtoday

WASHINGTON (AP) — An Alaska man accused of sending graphic threats to injure and kill six Supreme Court justices and a few of their relations has been indicted on federal fees, authorities stated Thursday.

Panos Anastasiou, 76, is accused of sending greater than 465 messages via a public courtroom web site, together with graphic threats of assassination and torture coupled with racist and homophobic rhetoric.

The indictment doesn’t specify which justices Anastasiou focused, however Attorney General Merrick Garland stated he made the graphic threats as retaliation for selections he disagreed with.

“Our democracy depends on the ability of public officials to do their jobs without fearing for their lives or the safety of their families,” he stated.

Prosecutors stated in an indictment filed Wednesday that the messages have been despatched between March 2023 and mid-July 2024. Anastasiou has been charged with 22 counts, together with 9 counts of creating threats in opposition to a federal choose and 13 counts of creating threats in interstate commerce.

Anastasiou was arrested Wednesday in Anchorage. Defense legal professional Jane Imholte, declined to remark and publicly listed telephone numbers for Anastasiou have been disconnected.

He faces a most of 10 years in jail for every rely of creating threats in opposition to a federal choose and as much as 5 years for every rely of creating threats in interstate commerce if convicted.

Threats concentrating on federal judges general have greater than doubled lately amid a surge of comparable violent messages directed at public officers across the nation, the U.S. Marshals Service beforehand stated.

In 2022, shortly after the leak of a draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade, a person was stopped close to the house of Justice Brett Kavanaugh with weapons and zip ties.

Associated Press author Mark Thiessen in Anchorage, Alaska, contributed to this report.