By Nate Raymond
BOSTON (Reuters) -A Massachusetts man was sentenced on Thursday to greater than two years in jail after he threatened to bomb synagogues and kill Jewish youngsters in a sequence of calls he positioned to 2 native homes of worship and the Israeli consulate in Boston after Israel and Hamas went to battle in 2023.
John Reardon, 60, was sentenced by U.S. District Choose Julia Kobick in Boston to 26 months in custody after pleading responsible in November to expenses associated to what prosecutors stated have been dozens of violent and antisemitic calls and voicemails he positioned to Jewish establishments starting on October 7, 2023.
Reardon’s lawyer didn’t reply to a request for remark. However in courtroom papers, she argued for a nine-month sentence, saying psychological well being points led Reardon to commit a criminal offense that was “terrifying, deeply hurtful, and can trigger lasting worry within the victims.”
He was charged in January 2024, because the U.S. Division of Justice started to warn of a rising variety of antisemitic threats nationally following the onset of the battle.
The battle started on October 7, 2023, when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel, killing 1,200 folks and taking 251 hostages, based on Israeli figures. Israel has killed greater than 61,000 Palestinians in its assault on Gaza since then, based on well being officers within the Palestinian enclave.
Prosecutors in courtroom papers stated Reardon in a voicemail left with a synagogue in Attleboro, Massachusetts, on January 25, 2024, stated that “you do understand that by supporting genocide which means it is OK for folks to commit genocide towards you.”
Prosecutors stated Reardon additionally threatened to bomb Jewish locations of worship and stated that by “supporting the killing of harmless little youngsters, which means it is OK to kill your youngsters.”
Prosecutors stated he then referred to as one other synagogue in Sharon, Massachusetts, and left a threatening voicemail. He additionally referred to as the Israeli consulate in Boston 98 occasions over a number of months, saying in a single name it was “time to organize the furnaces once more,” based on prosecutors, a reference to the Nazis’ systematic extermination of Jews within the World Struggle Two Holocaust.
(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Enhancing by Howard Goller)