By Daniel Stefanski |
On Monday, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Arizona announced that it had arrested a Tempe man this past weekend “on a federal complaint and arrest warrant by the Federal Bureau of Investigation for making a threat to execute a local Rabbi and ‘every other JEW [sic] I can find tonight at midnight of your Sabbath.’”
According to the press release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Arizona, “the complaint alleges that (the Tempe man) sent an email on the morning of Friday November 3, 2023, to a Rabbi at a local synagogue in Scottsdale, asking the Rabbi to ‘try to convince’ a judge in Utah to ‘drop the charges against’ (him) in a state district court case in Utah. The email stated: ‘If you do not use your influence to right this wrong I will execute you and every other JEW [sic] I can find tonight at midnight of your Sabbath.’ The email went on: ‘If you wish to communicate with me further, I will only meet in person,’ listed an address for the sender in Tempe, and was signed ‘Shalom, Viktor Sitkevicz.’”
United States Attorney Gary Restaino issued a statement in conjunction with the announcement, saying, “Civic engagement and civil dialogue help bind us together as a Nation. We have no tolerance for those who send threatening communications to Jewish faith leaders or to any other people in America. We will continue to exercise our prosecutorial discretion and deploy our resources to charge threats cases here in Arizona.”
The acting special agent in charge of the FBI’s Phoenix field office, Chad Alvarado, added, “The FBI takes all threats of violence seriously. The FBI and our law enforcement partners must take people who make threats at their word and intervene, because protecting human life is our absolute priority.”
In the release, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Arizona credits the FBI for conducting this investigation and the Tempe Police Department and the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office for assisting.
Daniel Stefanski is a reporter for AZ Free News. You can send him news tips using this link.
