CrimeFBI antiterrorism unit arrests white supremacist for contract killing plot

A leading member of a white supremacist gang in Louisiana was arrested by FBI agents over a murder-for-hire scheme.

The New Orleans Advocate reports that Jeffery Howard of Mississippi, a known member of the Aryan Brotherhood, was arrested Thursday. Federal authorities say he had agreed to execute a black drug dealer for $5,000.

The FBI New Orleans Division Joint Terrorism Task Force arrested Howard on a federal charge of using interstate commerce facilities in the commission of murder-for-hire. The St. Tammany Parish Sheriff’s Office and the Pearl River County Sheriff’s Office assisted the FBI in carrying out the arrest.

The FBI says Howard was involved in methamphetamine trafficking, and that on several occasions he sold drugs to an undercover law enforcement officer.

The Advocate notes that the FBI has been investigating Howard since at least June, but that the investigation was not progressing because potential informants “believed Howard was violent and would kill their families” if they talked to the authorities.

Howard son spent ten years in prison for a burglary conviction after becoming addicted to methamphetamine.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, a non-profit organization researching hate crimes, says he Aryan Brotherhood is one of the “largest and most-violent racist gangs operating in and out of the nation’s prisons.” The white supremacist group “is accused of carrying out murders, attempted murders, conspiracies, arsons, assaults, robberies and drug trafficking as part of an enterprise that goes back to at least 1993.”