Nearly two dozen suspects have been arrested in Atlanta on suspicion of domestic terrorism following a violent ambush on law enforcement on Sunday evening. The violent assault is the latest in a string of attacks connected to the “Stop Cop City” Antifa affinity movement.
Around 5:30 p.m. on March 5, around 200 militants broke off from a protest in the South River Forest area southeast of Atlanta to launch an attack on nearby police. The officers were guarding a construction site of a future first responder training facility that members of the extremist group seek to stop. Their violence has escalated in recent months, leading to a deadly shooting in January and 19 of their members being charged with terror offenses so far.
“They changed into black clothing and entered the construction area and began to throw large rocks, bricks, Molotov cocktails, and fireworks at police officers,” the Atlanta Police said in a statement about the Sunday attack.
Surveillance video shows some of the extremists dressed in military-style fatigues smashing up and setting fire to construction equipment after police retreated from the projectile attacks. The attack lasted around eight minutes.
Dekalb County jail records show that at least 23 people were arrested on suspicion of domestic terrorism. Atlanta Police confirmed they were charged. Nearly all of them are from out-of-state and have white-collar backgrounds. Two of the terror suspects come from outside the US.
Thomas Webb Jurgens, 28, is the only suspect with a registered address in the Atlanta area. He is an attorney for the Southern Poverty Law Center. The SPLC is a left-wing nonprofit that says it monitors extremism in the US. It has been marred in its own controversies where former staff accuse the organization of systemic racism and sexism. Its spokesperson, Michael Edison Hayden, did not respond to a request for comment. Hayden and the SPLC’s staff frequently communicate in a chummy manner with Antifa accounts on Twitter. By Monday evening, the SPLC and the National Lawyers Guild released two joint statements expressing support for Jurgens and the cause of the violent movement.
Terror suspect Thomas Webb Jurgens
Frédérique Robert-Paul, 34, is a radical anarchist from Saint-Pascal, Quebec, Canada with a graduate sociology background at Concordia University in Montreal.
Terror suspect Frédérique Robert-Paul
25-year-old suspect Dimitri Leny is from France.
Terror suspect Dimitri Leny
James “Jamie” Marsicano, 30, of Charlotte, NC, is a trans activist and member of the National Lawyers Guild, a far-left legal group that provides free legal aid to far-left violent extremists. Some of them in their green hat uniforms were captured on security cameras moving in and out with the violent mob. Marsicana is studying at the University of North Carolina School of Law and comes from a multi-millionaire family. She is the son of Michael Marsicano, the president and CEO of Foundation for the Carolinas, a community foundation with nearly $4 billion in assets. Axios dubbed him one of Charlotte’s “most powerful” people.
Terror suspect and NLG member James “Jamie” Marsicana identifies as a woman
Marsicana was profiled for radical leftist website The Funambulist. “She/they was a core organizer during the Charlotte Uprising where she led direct action trainings, established a legal infrastructure so freedom fighters could get out of jail and obtain legal aid,” the biography reads. Marsicana was arrested in June 2020 at a direct action.
James “Jamie” Marsicana was arrested at a far-left direct action in 2020 in Charlotte
Priscilla Grim, 48, of Brooklyn, N.Y., has a long history of far-left activism. She was an organizer in the Occupy movement, advocated for the disruption of the 2017 inauguration of Donald Trump and now identifies as Antifa on her social media.
Terror suspect Priscilla Grim
Victor Puertas, 46, of Provo, Utah, has a post on his Facebook from 2015 where he captions a photo of himself with the Antifa slogan: “Sometimes anti-social always anti-fascist!” A few days before his arrest, he posted a schedule of events in Atlanta to “stop cop city.”
Terror suspect Victor Puertas
Emma Bogush, of Bethany, Conn., uses the alias “Bo.” She is an “environmental educator” at the New Haven Ecology Project. Her father Paul Bogush reached out to a far-left group on Twitter to ask for updates about his child’s arrest. On prior posts, he boasted about her radicalism.
Terror suspect Emma Bogush
19-year-old suspect Kayley Meissner is from Madison, Wisc.
Terror suspect Kayley Meissner
Ehret William Nottingham, 22, of Fort Collins, Colo., is a trombone player and student at Colorado State University. He was praised in high school for being a climate activist.
Terror suspect Ehret William Nottingham
Timothy E. Bilodeau, of Boston, Mass. is an engineering teacher at the Acera School.
Jack April Beamon, of Athens, Ga., is a trans woman.
Terror suspect Jack April Beamon, of Athens, Ga.
Suspect Zoe Claire Larmey, 25, is a filmmaker with addresses in Nashville, Tenn.and Charlottesville, Va. She studied cinematography and political and social thought at the University of Virginia. She is the daughter of evangelical Christian missionaries and grew up in Tanzania.
Suspect Grace Martin, of Madison, Wisc., is a student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison studying environmental studies.
Suspect Luke Harper, 27, of Lake Worth, Fla., posted on his Instagram video of himself at the Atlanta direct action before he was arrested.
Terror suspect Luke Harper posted video from the direct action before he was arrested
Max Biederman, 25, from North Carolina, is a student at Arizona State University.
Kamryn Durel Pipes, 27, of Baton Rouge, La., listed himself on his YouTube channel as an active US Army soldier at Fort Campbell.
26-year-old suspect Samuel Ward is from Mesa, Ariz.
Terror suspect Samuel Ward, of Mesa, Ariz.
Amin Jalal Chaoui, is a 31-year-old nonbinary male from Richmond, Va.
Additional domestic terrorism suspects:
Mattia Luini, 30, of New York City
Maggie June Gates, 25, of Bloomington, Ind.
Colin Dorsey, of Blue Hill, Mass.
Ayla Elegla King, of Worchester, Mass.
Alexis A. Papali, of Jamaica Plain, Mass.
Sunday’s violent direct action was announced the month prior on the Twitter account of the “@defendATLforest” account, which has become a de facto official PR account for the movement. The group puts out statements, event plans and ways to donate money to arrested comrades. As the arrests were happening in real-time, the Twitter account of the Atlanta cell of Antifa (“@afainatl”) put out a call for donations.
Background
Since June 2021, far-left extremists from across the US have descended on the forested area southeast of Atlanta, declaring it separate from American jurisdiction and a cop-free zone. The occupiers have repeatedly destroyed construction equipment and assaulted construction workers.
Rioters attacked law enforcement officers with firebombs during a raid in May last year and a man who drove into the area in November 2022 was nearly burned to death when his vehicle was set on fire. In January, a Florida man in the occupation, Manuel Esteban Paez Teran, was shot dead by police after he first shot at a Georgia state patrol trooper, who was seriously injured. The shooting was followed several days later by a violent attack in downtown Atlanta where businesses were smashed up and a police vehicle was set on fire. Simultaneously, other solidarity attacks have occurred in the U.S. On Jan. 21, the adult trans child of Democratic House Minority Whip Katherine Clark (D-Mass.) was arrested for vandalism and allegedly bloodying an officer.
The 23 arrests on Sunday now bring to total 42 members of the “Stop Cop City” movement charged with domestic terrorism.
