Joseph Dibee, a former supporter of the Earth Liberation Front and Animal Liberation Front, was sentenced on Tuesday in federal court in Eugene to time served and could be also ordered to pay a portion of the $1.3 million in restitution other defendants in the case have previously been ordered to pay.
In April, Dibee pleaded guilty to the 1997 arson of Cavel West, a slaughterhouse in central Oregon that butchered wild horses and sold the meat in Europe. He also pleaded guilty to the 2001 arson of a Bureau of Land Management wild horse corral in Litchfield, California.
As part of his plea agreement, federal prosecutors dropped arson charges Dibee also faced in Washington state.
During the 1990′s, the U.S. Department of Justice considered the Earth Liberation Front and Animal Liberation Front the country’s greatest domestic terrorism threat. Between 1995 and 2001, people associated with those groups and known as “The Family” caused more than $45 million in damages in a series of arsons.
One of their highest-profile fires was in 1997 when they destroyed the Two Elk ski lodge in Vail, Colorado. Dibee is not connected to that incident.
The FBI arrested Dibee in 2018 in Havana, Cuba, after he spent more than a decade as an international fugitive, living in Russia and Syria. After his arrest, Dibee and spent 29 months in pretrial custody followed by home detention in Seattle.
U.S. District Court Judge Ann Aiken also included in Dibee’s sentence 1,000 hours of community service and supervised release. Aiken has overseen the decades-long case since the beginning that included more than 13 original defendants.
A hearing has been set for February when Dibee could be ordered to pay part of the restitution.
This story may be updated.
Correction: This story has been updated to reflect that Dibee may have to pay a portion of the $1.3 million in restitution.
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