A Tennessee man has been sentenced to more than 17 years in prison for destroying a nonprofit center with an incendiary device and attempting to provide material support to Hezbollah, a U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organization, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced.
Regan Darby Prater, 28, of Tullahoma, was sentenced to 210 months in prison, followed by 3 years of supervised release. He was also ordered to pay $1.289 million in restitution.
According to a federal indictment filed in May 2025, Prater was accused of setting fire to the Highlander Center’s administrative building in New Market, Tennessee, on March 29, 2019. He later admitted to using a napalm-based incendiary device to destroy the building, causing more than $1.2 million in damage.
Before setting the fire, Prater spray-painted a symbol associated with the Iron Guard, a Romanian fascist movement, in the center’s parking lot. The same symbol was engraved on the rifle used in the 2019 terrorist attacks in Christchurch, New Zealand, about 2 weeks earlier.
Prater admitted that he targeted the Highlander Center because of his white-supremacist beliefs and the center’s faith-based educational work and ties to the civil rights movement.
He also admitted that in 2019 he attempted to provide material support to Hezbollah. Prater obtained a document that purported to contain personal information about more than 35,000 people allegedly affiliated with the Israeli government and gave it to someone he believed was connected to the group. When sharing the document, Prater wrote, “Start the hunt,” according to the Justice Department.
The United States has designated Hezbollah as a foreign terrorist organization since 1997.
Prater pleaded guilty to the charges in April 2026. The FBI’s Nashville Field Office investigated the case with assistance from the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation.
Assistant U.S. Attorneys Casey T. Arrowood and Kyle J. Wilson prosecuted the case, with assistance from attorneys in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights and National Security divisions.