Michail Chkhikvishvili, 22, was known as ‘Commander Butcher’ and worked as the leader of the neo-Nazi group the ‘Maniac Murder Cult’ to recruit members to carry out atrocities
Michail Chkhikvishvili, 22, was sentenced to 15 years in prison(Image: Facebook)
The leader of a neo-Nazi group has been sentenced for trying to recruit others in a bid to carry out violent attacks against Jews and other racial minorities, including one plot which would have seen people dressed as Santa Claus handing out poisoned sweets to children.
22-year-old Michail Chkhikvishvili, from Georgia, is the leader of an Eastern European neo- Nazi group who goes by the nickname ‘Commander Butcher’. Yesterday, he was sentenced to 15 years in prison by a federal judge in Brooklyn for his crimes.
Chkhikvishvili had pleaded guilty in November to soliciting hate crimes and distributing information about making bombs and ricin.
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Chkhikvishvili “repeatedly called for the murder of innocent civilians, including children, and schemed to attack and terrorise Jewish communities and racial minorities in the United States,” said Assistant Attorney General for National Security John Eisenburg in a statement. ” Chkhikvishvili, for example, tried to recruit a supposed associate to dress up as Santa Claus and pass out poisoned candy to minority children.”
“I acknowledge that my actions have brought harm by spreading hatred and violence and I’m truly sorry for that,” Chkhikvishvili wrote in a letter to the judge last month. His lawyer, Zachary Taylor, asked the judge for a five-year sentence, citing Chkhikvishvili’s mental health struggles as a teenager with depression and bullying which led to him falling “under the spell of violent extremist content” on social media.
But, he added, Chkhikvishvili has since reformed. Taylor also argued that during his nearly year-long confinement in Moldova, where Chkhikvishvili was arrested in 2024 on an international warrant, he has faced harsh conditions.
Prosecutors described Chkhikvishvili as being the leader of the ‘Maniac Murder Cult’, an international extremist group that follows a neo-Nazi ideology promoting violence intended to trigger a racial and religious war. They said the group’s violent solicitations – which are promoted through Telegram channels and outlined in the ‘Hater’s Handbook’ – appear to have inspired multiple real-life killings.
One of these includes a shooting in Nashville, Tennessee, last year that killed a 16-year-old student. Solomon Henderson, 17, left behind a recording after the Nashville Antioch High School shooting in which he attributed his actions to the Maniac Murder Cult, which is based in Russia and Ukraine.
Since 2021, prosecutors say Chkhikvishvili distributed the ‘Hater’s Handbook’ to members and other people. In a letter to the judge, Chkhikvishvili said: “I’m very ashamed [of] authoring Hater’s Handbook, hoping one day it will disappear, I wish I never wrote it.”
Prosecutors say Chkhikvishvili travelled to Brooklyn in 2022 where he then began repeatedly encouraging others to commit hate crimes and other acts of violence. They said in 2023 he solicited an undercover FBI employee to commit bombings and arsons “for the purpose of harming racial minorities, Jewish individuals and others.”
In 2024, the undercover FBI worker was directed to “target the Jewish community, Jewish schools, and Jewish children in Brooklyn with posion,” prosecutors said in a statement. “ Chkhikvishvili sent detailed manuals about creatign and mixing lethal poisons and gases, including ricin,” they added.
“The defendant is a hate-mongering menace who intended to hurt and kill children in the Jewish community and in other minority communities in New Yrok City,” said US Attorney Joseph Nocella in a statement. “Today’s sentence sends a strong message to hateful extremists, wherever you are, who seek to spread fear through unspeakable violence: we will find you and prosecute you to the fullest extent of the law.”
US District Judge Carol Bagley Amon sentenced Chkhikvishvili to concurrent 180-month sentences on the two counts. The judge said: “The defendant is not sentenced because of his warped views. He is being sentenced for his calls to action.”
