Source: X | @FBI
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
A federal judge sentenced Regan Darby Prater, 28, of Tullahoma, Tennessee, to 210 months in prison on October 20, 2026, after he pleaded guilty to arson and attempting to provide material support to Hezbollah. Prater used a napalm-based device to destroy the Highlander Research and Education Center, a nonprofit linked to the Civil Rights Movement, and separately passed a database containing personal information on 35,000 individuals affiliated with the Israeli government to a person he believed was a Hezbollah operative.
ANALYSIS
The October 20 sentencing closed a case that brought two categories of federal terrorism offense into a single prosecution, a combination that appears rarely in federal charging documents. Prater drove from Tullahoma to New Market on March 7, 2019, where he detonated a sparkler bomb laced with a napalm mixture and destroyed the Highlander Center's administrative building. Before setting off the device, he spray-painted the Iron Guard symbol, an emblem of a 1930s-era Romanian fascist paramilitary unit, in the parking lot. He pleaded guilty in April 2026 to the arson count and a count of attempting to provide material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization.
The Hezbollah count stems from a separate act. After the arson, Prater obtained a document purporting to list personal data on approximately 35,000 individuals affiliated with the Israeli government and transferred it to a person he believed to be a Hezbollah contact, writing "Start the hunt" in the message accompanying the document. Investigators have not disclosed whether the recipient was an actual Hezbollah operative or a government asset, and the charge was prosecuted as an attempt rather than a completed transfer.
Prater told investigators that white-supremacist ideology drove both the arson and his outreach to Hezbollah. He said he targeted the Highlander Center because of its faith-based educational programming and its historical association with Civil Rights organizing, including training that preceded major sit-in campaigns of the 1960s. The restitution order of $1,289,000 reflects the destruction of that building. The FBI Nashville field office led the investigation, with assistance from the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation.
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