Neo-Nazi former reservist jailed in U.S. formally loses weapons seized from Beausejour home

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This article was published 25/10/2023 (720 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A provincial court judge has approved an application by Crown prosecutors to formally forfeit several firearms RCMP seized from the home of neo-Nazi Patrik Jordan Mathews in 2019.

The Crown also successfully submitted an application to prohibit the 30-year-old convicted terrorist and former Canadian military reservist from owning any guns or ammunition in Canada for five years.

Mathews, who was convicted in an American federal court of possession of firearms intended to be used for terrorist purposes in October 2021, is currently serving a nine-year prison sentence in Wisconsin.

Mathews, who was exposed by an undercover Free Press investigation as attempting to recruit for neo-Nazi group The Base, is expected to be deported back to Canada following his American sentence and a three-year period of supervised release.

Provincial court Judge Cynthia Devine approved the Crown’s applications in a written decision issued Oct. 13.

The judge heard the Crown’s arguments ex parte — without Mathews being present — after an application for the orders was served on him in the American federal prison he has been incarcerated in since last November. The Crown also sent him a letter in June this year advising him he could attend the hearing by phone or have a Canadian lawyer represent him, or the Crown would continue without him.

Devine’s decision includes details of what RCMP seized at Mathews’ Beausejour home and of their probe into his activities following the Free Press reports.

Mounties learned that Mathews had a valid Canadian firearms Possession and Acquisition Licence as well as a registered handgun. His PAL was revoked on Sept. 13, 2019.

RCMP officers found the Tokarev Model TT-33 handgun, two SKS rifles, an SVT rifle, a Mosin-Nagant bolt-action rifle, an EMEI Rifle and a Model M305 rifle, along with paintball guns, airsoft guns and a BB gun.

None of the weapons were safely stored, Devine noted.

Mounties had executed a warrant on Mathews’s Beausejour home on Aug. 19, 2019, three days after the Free Press investigation was published identifying Mathews as a neo-Nazi recruiter who wanted to foment “race war” via terrorist actions.

He fled to the United States shortly after the article was published, where he was picked up and hidden by American members of the neo-Nazi group.

The terrorist group then planned to attack a pro-gun rally in Richmond, Va., in January 2020, but the American Federal Bureau of Investigation arrested Mathews and other members of the group in Delaware just days before the attack was to take place, following an extensive investigation.

Devine wrote that the Crown satisfied her in proving that the guns should not be returned to Mathews and he be prohibited from owning any firearms for five years.

“It is not in the interests of anyone that Mathews possess firearms or weapons of any kind,” she wrote.

“The conditions in the world today are even more fractured and violent than they were at the time of the seizure of the firearms at Mathews’ residence. The risk that Mathews would pose if armed (is) elevated.”

erik.pindera@freepress.mb.ca