The leader of a neo-Nazi accelerationist group was sentenced to 15 years in federal prison Wednesday for plotting mass racial killings, including a scheme to poison Jewish schoolchildren in Brooklyn, the Justice Department announced.

Michail Chkhikvishvili, 22, known as “Commander Butcher,” led the Maniac Murder Cult (MKY) and pleaded guilty in November to soliciting hate crimes and providing instructions for manufacturing bombs and the poison ricin. He was extradited from Moldova last May.

Chkhikvishvili’s plots included a New Year’s Eve attack in which an operative dressed as Santa Claus would distribute poisoned candy to minorities, and a follow-up plan to target Brooklyn Jewish schools and children with ricin. He told an undercover FBI agent, whom he believed was a genuine recruit, that he wanted the attack to be bigger than the 2011 Norway massacre that killed 77 people.

His “Hater’s Handbook,” distributed since 2021, urged followers to carry out school shootings, use child suicide bombers, and conduct vehicle-ramming attacks. A Nashville school shooter who killed one person last January cited the manifesto, as did a man who stabbed five people outside a Turkish mosque in 2024.

“This defendant concocted hate-fueled, mass-casualty plans and inspired others to commit attacks based on his vile rhetoric,” said NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch.

National Security Assistant Attorney General John Eisenberg said the sentencing had taken “a monster off our streets.”

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)