FILE PHOTO: A woman walks past the U.S. Department of Justice Building, in Washington, U.S., December 15, 2020. REUTERS/Al Drago/File Photo
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A Maryland woman affiliated with a neo-Nazi group was sentenced to 18 years in prison on Wednesday after admitting to a plot to attack Baltimore's power grid, according to the U.S. Justice Department and court filings.
Sarah Beth Clendaniel, 36, sought to target five electrical substations around Baltimore, Maryland's largest city, to further a white supremacist ideology that sought the collapse of American society, according to prosecutors.
"The Justice Department will continue to aggressively counter, disrupt and prosecute those who seek to launch these kinds of hate-fueled attacks that target our critical infrastructure, endanger entire cities, and threaten our national security," U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement.
Clendaniel pleaded guilty in April to conspiracy to damage an energy facility and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon.
Clendaniel was recorded telling an associate that the plan, if successful, "would completely destroy this whole city," according to prosecutors.
A lawyer for Clendaniel asked a judge to impose a 10-year prison sentence, arguing that Clendaniel had a difficult upbringing and "sought meaning and control in toxic beliefs and planning of destruction," according to a court filing.
"Her inherent goodness may at times be buried beneath destructive ideologies, but it is not destroyed," the lawyer, Sedira Banan, said.
Clendaniel was charged last year along with Brandon Russell, the founder of a neo-Nazi group called the Atomwaffen Division, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights organization that tracks U.S. hate groups.
Russell is awaiting trial in his case.
(Reporting by Andrew Goudsward; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)
