Regan Darby Prater, 28, of Tullahoma, Tennessee, was sentenced to 210 months in prison, three years of supervised release and $1,289,000 in restitution for arson and attempted provision of material support to a foreign terrorist organization, the Justice Department said in a statement announced on October 21. Focal News reported the sentence was handed down in federal court on October 21. Prater pleaded guilty to both charges in April 2026.

Source: U.S. Department of Justice

Court documents established that Prater used a so-called “sparkler bomb” — a napalm-based incendiary device ignited by a common sparkler — to destroy facilities maintained by the Highlander Center, a nonprofit research and education center in New Market, Tennessee, the department said. In his guilty plea, Prater admitted he drove from his home in Tullahoma to the center, ignited the device and destroyed a building, causing over $1.2 million in damage — yaani more than 12 lakh dollars. Focal News reported the fire took place on March 29, 2019, and destroyed an administrative building.

Source: Focal News (Nashville)

Before detonating the device, Prater spray-painted the symbol of the Iron Guard, a 1930s-era paramilitary arm of the Romanian Nazi Party, in the Highlander Center parking lot, the Justice Department said. The same symbol was engraved on a rifle used in the Christchurch, New Zealand, terrorist attacks two weeks before the arson. Prater acknowledged he committed the arson because of his white-supremacist ideology and in response to the center's faith-based educational priorities and its association with the Civil Rights Movement, the department said.

Focal News noted the blaze also destroyed decades of historic materials, including documents, speeches, artifacts and memorabilia from the civil rights movement. The Highlander Center is a social-justice education and research organization where Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks were among the visitors, Focal reported.

Prater also admitted that in 2019 he attempted to provide material support to Hizballah, also known as Hezbollah, which the United States has designated a foreign terrorist organization since 1997, the Justice Department said. He obtained a document purporting to contain personally identifiable information of over 35,000 individuals purportedly affiliated with the government of Israel and provided it to an individual he believed was associated with Hizballah, saying, among other things, “Start the hunt,” according to the department.

The case was investigated by the FBI's Nashville Field Office with assistance from the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, and was prosecuted by Assistant US Attorneys Casey T. Arrowood and Kyle J. Wilson for the Eastern District of Tennessee, with assistance from the Civil Rights Division and the National Security Division's Counterterrorism Section, the department said.