WASHINGTON (CN) — A New Jersey woman became the first person linked to the far-right militia group the Three Percenters to plead guilty to charges stemming from the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.
Rasha Abual-Ragheb, 40, is one of seven Capitol rioters who has ties to the Three Percenters — an anti-government group whose name stems from the inaccurate historical claim that only 3% of American colonists took up arms against British tyranny during the American Revolution.
The other rioters connected to the group are six California men who were indicted in June. Most rioters accused of being members of extremist organizations have ties to the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys.
In late 2020, federal authorities already had Abual-Ragheb on their radar for her comments in Facebook and Telegram group chats that warned of an impending civil war and urged members of the New Jersey chapter of the American Patriot Three Percent to rise up in revolution to fight for the U.S. Constitution.
Agents who interviewed Abual-Ragheb in November 2020 learned that she was born in Lebanon and fled to Jordan as a child to escape the civil war there.
So when Abual-Ragheb posted on Facebook on Jan. 7 that she had been tear-gassed and pepper-sprayed at the Capitol riot, a tipster notified the FBI, and Abual-Ragheb was quickly identified by federal authorities.
“I was part of the history,” Abual-Ragheb wrote on Facebook, according to an FBI agent’s affidavit. “We the people won’t take it anymore.”
The affidavit also said that another confidential source told the FBI that they met Abual-Ragheb outside a hotel in Washington on Jan. 6, and she confided in the source that she had been at the Capitol and “saw a woman get shot.”
In an email to Courthouse News, Abual-Ragheb’s attorney Elita Amato said that her client isn’t in contact with — or connected with — any Three Percenters.
“She never had any intention of becoming affiliated with their group,” Amato said.
Out of the four charges she received from participating in the riot, Abual-Ragheb pleaded guilty to one of them: parading, demonstrating or picketing at the Capitol — a common plea deal that the Justice Department has been offering nonviolent rioters.
The misdemeanor crime carries a maximum sentence of six months in prison and a $5,000 fine, though rioters sentenced for the crime thus far have received far less.
Abual-Ragheb’s sentencing hearing is scheduled for Nov. 9.
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