TENNESSEE MAN SENTENCED TO 17½ YEARS IN FEDERAL PRISON FOR ARSON AND ATTEMPTED SUPPORT OF HEZBOLLAH

KNOXVILLE, TENNESSEE — A 28-year-old Tennessee man has been sentenced to 17 years and six months in federal prison for destroying a nonprofit educational facility in an ideologically motivated arson attack and attempting to provide material support to Hezbollah, a U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organization.

Regan Darby Prater, of Tullahoma, received a 210-month prison sentence on October 20, 2026, along with three years of supervised release and an order to pay $1,289,000 in restitution. The sentencing followed his April 13 guilty plea to one count of arson and one count of attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization.

According to federal court documents, Prater carried out the arson on March 29, 2019, against the Highlander Center, a nonprofit research and education organization in New Market, Tennessee, with longstanding connections to civil rights education and community organizing. Prater admitted traveling from his residence in Tullahoma to the facility, where he used a napalm-based incendiary device to ignite a fire that destroyed an administrative building and caused more than $1.2 million in damage.

Before setting the fire, Prater spray-painted a symbol associated with the Iron Guard, a Romanian fascist organization with historical ties to Nazi ideology, in the facility’s parking lot. Federal investigators connected the symbol to extremist imagery also displayed during the March 15, 2019, terrorist attacks in Christchurch, New Zealand, which occurred two weeks before the Highlander Center arson.

As part of his guilty plea, Prater acknowledged that his white-supremacist beliefs motivated the attack. He specifically identified the Highlander Center’s faith-based educational activities and historical association with the Civil Rights Movement as reasons for targeting the organization. The admitted motive established that the destruction was an intentional act directed against the institution’s activities and historical significance.

Federal prosecutors also established that Prater attempted to provide assistance to Hezbollah during 2019. According to his plea admissions, he obtained a document purportedly containing personally identifiable information for more than 35,000 individuals believed to have connections to the Israeli government.

Prater transmitted the document to someone he believed was associated with Hezbollah and accompanied the information with a statement encouraging violence against the individuals identified. The Justice Department did not establish that the recipient was an actual Hezbollah operative or that the information was subsequently used to carry out an attack. The criminal offense involved Prater’s admitted attempt to provide support to the designated organization.

Hezbollah has been designated a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the United States since 1997. Federal law prohibits knowingly providing, or attempting to provide, material support or resources to organizations holding that designation. Prater’s guilty plea established his criminal responsibility for the attempted-support offense without requiring proof that the intended assistance successfully reached the organization.

The FBI’s Nashville Field Office investigated the case with assistance from the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation. The prosecution was handled by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Casey T. Arrowood and Kyle J. Wilson of the Eastern District of Tennessee, with assistance from Trial Attorney Katherine McCallister of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division and Trial Attorney Justin Sher of the National Security Division’s Counterterrorism Section.

The sentencing concludes the federal prosecution of Prater’s admitted offenses, combining punishment for the destruction of a civil rights-associated educational institution with a separate conviction for attempting to assist a designated foreign terrorist organization. In addition to his 17½-year prison term, the restitution order imposes substantial financial accountability for the damage resulting from the arson.

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