Authorities in Idaho say one of the 31 masked and uniformed members of a right-wing group arrested in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho on Saturday afternoon is from Alabama.
According to the Kootenai County (Idaho) Sheriff’s Office, Wesley Evan Van Horn, of Lexington, was among the men charged with criminal conspiracy. All have since bailed out of jail.
Coeur d’Alene police said 31 people from all over the country who were inside a U-Haul were arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to riot during a “Pride in the Park” event. Only one was from Idaho, with others from Washington, Arkansas, Texas and Wyoming.
The people arrested were from a group called the Patriot Front, police said, which is described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as “a white nationalist hate group” that broke off from a similar far-right group after the deadly Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017.
A video circulating on Facebook showed Idaho law enforcement officers opening the U-Haul moving truck filled with the apparent protesters. Another video also showed the men on their knees with their hands behind their backs, surrounded by police officers in tactical gear.
The men arrested wore outfits similar to those typical for Patriot Front: khaki pants, blue shirts, masks and baseball caps.
Photos show some of the men wearing shirts that read, “RECLAIM AMERICA,” while one said, “Conquerors not Thieves,” an apparent reference to the belief that white colonialists were within their rights to take Native American lands.
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