Tennessee Man Sentenced to 17.5 Years for Arson of Civil Rights Center and Attempting to Aid Hezbollah
TENNESSEE — The U.S. Department of Justice announced on Oct. 21 that Regan Darby Prater, 28, of Tullahoma, Tennessee, was sentenced on Oct. 20 to 210 months in federal prison, followed by three years of supervised release, and ordered to pay $1,289,000 in restitution for arson and attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization. Prater pleaded guilty to the charges in April 2026.
According to court documents, Prater used a so-called "sparkler bomb" — a napalm-based incendiary device ignited by a common sparkler — to destroy facilities maintained by the Highlander Center, a nonprofit research and education center in New Market, Tennessee. As part of his guilty plea, Prater admitted that he drove from his home in Tullahoma to the Highlander Center, ignited the device, and destroyed a building, ultimately causing over $1.2 million in damage.
Before detonating the bomb, Prater spray-painted the symbol of the Iron Guard, a 1930s-era paramilitary arm of the Romanian Nazi Party, in the Highlander Center parking lot, the Justice Department said. The same symbol was engraved on the rifle used in the terrorist attacks in Christchurch, New Zealand, about two weeks before the arson. Prater acknowledged that he committed the arson out of white-supremacist ideology and as a response to the Highlander Center's faith-based educational priorities and its association with the Civil Rights Movement.
In addition to arson, Prater admitted that in 2019 he attempted to provide material support to Hizballah, also known as Hezbollah, which the United States has recognized as a Foreign Terrorist Organization since 1997. Specifically, he obtained a document purporting to contain personally identifiable information of more than 35,000 individuals purportedly affiliated with the government of Israel, and provided it to a person he believed to be associated with Hizballah, writing, among other things: "Start the hunt."
The case was investigated by the FBI's Nashville Field Office with assistance from the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, and prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Casey T. Arrowood and Kyle J.
Wilson for the Eastern District of Tennessee, with trial attorneys from the Civil Rights Division and the National Security Division's Counterterrorism Section.
The Justice Department said it will hold accountable those who commit extremist-motivated violence and destruction and attempt to support foreign terrorist organizations.
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：Highlander Folk School历史纪念牌（资料图）。照片：Bryanmackinnon，CC BY-SA 4.0，经Wikimedia Commons。Photo: Historical marker for the Highlander Folk School (file photo). Photo: Bryanmackinnon, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
