Jan. 26 (UPI) -- Three men were sentenced to prison for conspiring in a plot to bomb a Somali community in Kansas in 2016, the Department of Justice said.

The three men were sentenced to 25, 26 and 30 years in prison on charges relating to their plan to detonate a bomb at a Garden City apartment complex in 2016, the U.S. Justice Department announced Friday. Muslim immigrants from Somalia lived in the complex, which also contained a mosque where they worshiped.


Curtis Allen, 51, of Liberal, Kansas, was sentenced to 25 years. Gavin Wright, 53, of Beaver County, Oklahoma, was sentenced to 26 years and Patrick Stein was sentenced to 30 years.

"The Department of Justice works every day to thwart terrorist threats to the United States," Acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker said in a statement. "The defendants in this case acted with clear premeditation in an attempt to kill innocent people on the basis of their religion and national origin. That's not just illegal -- it's morally repugnant."

The defendants were sentenced based on convictions last year on one count of conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction and one count of conspiracy to violate to housing rights of intended victims. Wright was also convicted of lying to the FBI in a matter involving domestic terrorism.

They belonged to the Crusaders, a militia organization.

"These charges are based on eight months of investigation by the FBI that is alleged to have taken the investigators deep into a hidden culture of hatred and violence," then-Acting U.S. Attorney Tom Beal said in 2016.

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During the investigation, a confidential source recorded number conversations with defendants where they discussed obtaining four vehicles, filling them with explosives and parking them at four corners of the apartment complex to create an explosion that would kill its occupants, officials said.

Stein met with an undercover FBI agent, who posed as a black market arms dealer, in an effort to obtain a bomb, the Justice Department said. Stein also drove with an agent to see the apartment building they were plotting to destroy, according to law enforcement.

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