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“Understood,” Mathews replied simply. He offered the same reply when informed of his rights by the judge.

Mathews was arrested along with two other men: Brian Mark Lemley, 33, and 19-year-old William Garfield Bilbrough IV. Both are U.S. citizens and also appeared in court.

Bail hearings have been set for Wednesday, when prosecutors are expected to ask that Mathews remain behind bars.

Mystery had surrounded Mathews’s whereabouts since he disappeared in August amid allegations of being a neo-Nazi.

At the time, Mathews was a combat engineer with the 38 Canadian Brigade Group in Winnipeg, though the military said then it was investigating his alleged links to The Base and fast-tracking his request to be released from the Canadian Armed Forces.

The RCMP were also reportedly conducting their own investigation, though the Mounties have not confirmed the report. They had previously seized a number of weapons from a house in Beausejour, Man., about 60 kilometres east of Winnipeg, where Mathews lived.

Shortly after he disappeared, Mathews’s truck was found abandoned on a rural property in southern Manitoba near the U.S. border. The RCMP said it was treating his disappearance as a missing-person case.

In a statement Thursday, the RCMP said it was aware of Mathews’s arrest but would not comment on an investigation in another country.

The charges against Mathews were laid out in a news release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Maryland on Thursday, which alleges Mathews crossed illegally from Manitoba to Minnesota on Aug. 19.