The leader of a U.S. neo-Nazi group wanted in the United States for allegedly fomenting violence at political rallies has been apprehended by Romanian authorities in Bucharest.
Robert Paul Rundo, 33, was taken into custody in the Romanian capital with the help of a police special-forces unit after he was spotted at a gym on March 29.
He had a document identifying himself as Robert Lazar Pavic, according to judicial sources. It is not clear when he entered Romania.
The U.S citizen is currently being held by the General Directorate of Police in Bucharest. U.S. authorities have sent a request for his extradition on charges that he conspired to attend political rallies and use combat tactics and physical violence against people and groups that did not support their ideology.
Rundo allegedly assaulted several people, including a police officer, at two rallies in the United States. The charges are in connection with activity that took place between December 2016 and October 2018.
The Bucharest Court of Appeals opened an extradition procedure on behalf of Rundo, and April 25 was set for the next hearing in the case.
Rundo is suspected of promoting white-supremacist ideology for the past three years in Serbia, Bulgaria, and Hungary.
"The suspect is said to be one of the founders of an organization that supports the ideology of white supremacy, which has publicly presented itself as a group ready to fight, campaigning for a new nationalist movement of white supremacy and identity," a Romanian police statement said.
The Rise Above Movement (RAM) is based in southern California and members believe they are fighting a modern world corrupted by the "destructive cultural influences" of liberals, Jews, Muslims, and nonwhite immigrants.
They describe themselves as a "premier alt-right MMA (mixed martial arts) club." RAM members participated in the so-called Unite The Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017 that led to the death of a counterprotester.
Rundo was detained the following year in connection with events that took place in California but was released after the charges were dismissed, and he left the United States for Europe.
According to the Anti-Defamation League, Rundo tried to create a group dedicated to white supremacy in Eastern Europe. The open-source investigative group Bellingcat revealed in 2020 that Rundo was in Serbia and had posted videos of himself and others on Telegram in which they are seen writing white-supremacist messages on walls in Belgrade.
In February 2020, Rundo published an article on a nationalist website in which he wrote that he participated in a march organized by Serbian extremists in front of the U.S. Embassy in Belgrade.
Bellingcat reported that Rundo also participated in a neo-Nazi commemoration that took place in Budapest in February 2020 and was attended by 600 neo-Nazis from Europe. They gathered in the Hungarian capital for what they call Honor Day, commemorating an escape attempt by besieged Nazi forces in 1945.
Two weeks later, Rundo was in Sofia, Bulgaria, for a neo-Nazi march that was banned by local authorities.
In an interview on a neo-Nazi podcast in September 2020, Rundo used anti-Semitic language, referenced to Adolf Hitler's book Mein Kampf, and claimed he left the United States because of nonstop harassment by U.S. authorities.