Georgian National Charged with Soliciting Hate Crimes and a Mass Casualty Attack in NYC
Michail Chkhikvishvili, 20, a Georgian national known by several aliases, including “Commander Butcher” and “Mishka,” was indicted in the New York City on July 16 on charges of soliciting hate crimes and planning acts of mass violence, the U.S. Attorney’s Office reported on July 16. Chkhikvishvili is an alleged leader of the Maniac Murder Cult (also known as “Maniacs Murder Cult,” “Maniacs: Cult of Killing,” “MKY,” “MMC” and “MKU,”), an international neo-Nazi extremist group that “adheres to a Neo-Nazi accelerationist ideology and promotes violence and violent acts against racial minorities, the Jewish community and other groups it deems “undesirables”, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Chkhikvishvili was arrested on July 6 in Chișinău, Moldova, on the basis of an Interpol Wanted Person Diffusion. The indictment, returned by a federal grand jury in Brooklyn, includes charges of soliciting violent crimes, distributing information on how to make explosives, and transmitting threatening communications.
Prosecutors say he recruited others to commit arson and bombings, and planned a New Year’s Eve attack in which Santa Claus would hand out poisoned candy to racial minorities and Jewish children in Brooklyn. “Chkhikvishvili intended that the planned attack would be a “bigger action than Breivik,” referring to Anders Behring Breivik, a Norwegian Neo-Nazi who killed 77 people in a bombing and mass shooting in Norway in 2011,” the investigation says.
The indictment details Chkhikvishvili’s activities, including a manifesto encouraging mass violence and plans to carry out attacks while in Brooklyn in 2022.
Beginning at least as early as July 2022, Chkhikvishvili allegedly repeatedly encouraged others, primarily through encrypted mobile messaging platforms, to commit violent hate crimes and other acts of violence on behalf of MKY. This included soliciting acts of mass violence in New York from an individual who claimed to be a potential MKY recruit but who, unbeknownst to Chkhikvishvili, was actually an undercover FBI agent.
