A federal court in Washington sentenced this Tuesday 22 years in prison to the cubanamerican Enrique Tarrio, former leader of the Proud Boys, for leading a plot to prevent the transition of power after the 2020 presidential election, which led to the assault on the United States Capitol by supporters of Donald Trump.
The sentence of Tarrío, 39 years old and resident in Miami, is the most severe prison sentence that has been imposed on any of the participants in the riots of January 6, 2021, which shook the foundations of American democracy.
Before the sentence was handed down, Tarrío begged the judge for mercy Timothy Kelly. With a broken voice he said that he disappointed his family; called January 6 a “national shame,” and apologized to the police officers who defended the Capitol and the legislators who fled in terror, said an office of the agency AP.
“I'm not a political fanatic. Inflicting harm or changing the results of the elections was not my goal,” Tarrío said, adding: “Please have mercy. “I ask you not to take away my 40 years.”
Judge Kelly, who was appointed to the position by Trump, stated that Tarrío had not previously shown no public remorse for his actions, which resulted in “200 men, prepared for battle, surrounding the Capitol.”
The magistrate held that severe punishment was necessary to deter future political violence.
“It can't happen again. "It can't happen again," he repeated.
Tarrío was declared guilty last May of seditious conspiracy and other crimes, at the end of a trial that lasted more than three months in a federal court in Washington, DC, and that included four other members of the Proud Boys for orchestrating a plot to obstruct the peaceful transfer of presidential power after the elections of 2020.
The jury also found three of the extremist group's lieutenants guilty of the same charges: Ethan Nordean, Joseph Biggs and Zachary Rehl, subsequently sentenced by Judge Kelly to terms of 18, 17 and 15 years in prison, respectively.
Dominic Pezzola He was the only defendant acquitted of the charge of seditious conspiracy and received a 10-year prison sentence.
For the same facts, but in a separate case, Stewart Rhodes, founder of Oath Keepers was sentenced to 18 years in prison for seditious conspiracy. Other members of his anti-government militia group received lighter sentences than prosecutors requested.
In August, the United States Department of Justice requested a sentence of 33 years in prison for Tarrío, pointing to him as the ringleader of the plot that sought to annul the Democrat's electoral victory Joe Biden about Trump.
Enrique Tarrío was born in Miami in 1984, into a family from Matanzas that emigrated to the United States.
Prior to being part of the Proud Boys, the Cuban-American had in his record two criminal cases: In 2014, a federal court found him guilty and sentenced him to 30 months for being involved in a scheme to resell stolen medical devices; and in 2003, he received a probation sentence for the theft of a motorcycle.
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