Nab Neo-Nazis in bomb plot

New York Daily News/May 25, 2005
By Derek Rose

Two avowed New Jersey racists have been charged with trying to build a fertilizer bomb similar to the device that blew up in Oklahoma City, authorities said yesterday.

Gabriel Carafa of Pennsville, N.J., and Craig Orler of Whiting, N.J., allegedly gave a federal informant 60 pounds of a fertilizer component and asked him to build a bomb.

"Carafa boasted that this urea was more pure than the stuff that [Timothy] McVeigh used," authorities said in court papers.

McVeigh was executed for his role in bombing a federal building in Oklahoma City.

Convicted of beating a Hindu store owner in 2002, Carafa, 24, has "rahowa" tattooed across his forehead - skinhead shorthand for "RAcial HOly WAr."

New Jersey Division of Criminal Justice spokesman John Hagerty said authorities are still trying to determine why they wanted a bomb. "We're not quite sure of the target that Mr. Carafa had in mind, if anything in particular," Hagerty said.

Authorities cut short the five-month-old investigation last week, after the pair allegedly sold 11 stolen rifles, handguns and shotguns to undercover investigators. The weapons were stolen from a home in Pennsville, authorities said.

Carafa is a leader in Matthew Hale's racist Creativity Movement, formerly known as World Church of the Creator, authorities said. Both Carafa and Orler are members of "The Hated," a neo-Nazi skinhead group, authorities said.

Hagerty said the hate groups had some "limited activity" in South Jersey. The Southern Poverty Law Center says the group is active in Newark and Toms River, N.J.

Orler, 28, also has three felony convictions, for two burglaries and an assault. The pair were both barred from possessing firearms.