Authorities arrested Sunday a staff attorney at the Southern Poverty Law Center, a left-leaning civil rights group notorious for branding mainstream conservative and Christians nonprofits “hate groups,” on terrorism charges, with police saying he took part in a violent riot where agitators threw rocks, Molotov cocktails, and fireworks at police at a training center near Atlanta.
In a statement Monday evening, the SPLC acknowledged that police arrested an employee, but claimed that he had been acting as a legal observer with the National Lawyers Guild. The guild condemned every police arrest Sunday as an example of “ongoing state repression and violence against racial and environmental justice protesters,” and the SPLC condemned escalating “policing tactics against protesters.” Neither organization explicitly stated that the observer had not engaged in violence against police.
According to DeKalb County Jail records, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation on Sunday arrested Thomas Webb Jurgens, describing him as a 6-foot male with brown hair and brown eyes. Jurgens faces one charge of “domestic terrorism.”
