Micky Mayon, white supremacist wanted by FBI, arrested in Israel

Where's the last place you would look for a white supremacist on the run?

Micky Mayon, a violent neo-Nazi on the FBI most-wanted list, decided it had to be Israel. So for two years, the suspected KKK member laid low in the Jewish State after fleeing the United States.

Today, Mayon's luck ran out after undercover Israeli immigration police raided his Tel Aviv flat in the early hours.

Even then they were unaware that the man in their grasp was wanted for allegedly burning the car of a US judge who had ordered that he stand trial on firearms charges.

Mayon, 32, fled the United States on November 1, 2007, boarding a Continental Airlines flight to Tel Aviv. After arriving on a one-month tourist visa, he stayed on illegally.

He was known for preaching white supremacist, neo-Nazi views around his home town of Steelton, Pennsylvania. Israeli authorities were told by Interpol that he belonged to the Ku Klux Klan.

"He was here because he thought this was the last place they would look for him," Sabine Haddad, a spokeswoman for the Israeli Interior Ministry, said.

Ms Haddad described how Israeli immigration police burst into the south Tel Aviv apartment where Mayon had been hiding.

“He said ... that he did not hold a job while in Israel but made some money by washing dishes and that his parents sent him money to make ends meet."

Manyon is said to have moved often to evade police, but undercover police from the National Immigration Authority's Oz unit staked out his apartment after a tip over his illegal status in the country.

"We didn't expect to partake in this kind of activity while enforcing immigration laws," Tziki Sela, the head of the Oz unit, said. "But the law is the law, and it applies to all illegal migrants — it is enforced in the same way."

American officers are expected to arrive in Israel in the coming days to escort Mayon back to the US, where he will await trial on charges of racist assault, setting fire to vehicles belonging to federal agents, and a host of violent incidents.

"The search for Mayon came to a successful conclusion today with the actions in Israel," said Marshal Michael R. Regan. "Locating and identifying Mayon in a foreign country sends a strong message that you can run, but you cannot hide."

The Klu Klux Klan

— The Ku Klux Klan is a racist, anti-Semitic movement committed to violence to achieve racial segregation and white supremacy

— The first klan was founded in 1866 in the aftermath of the American Civil War

— More than 40 klan groups exist in the US, many with multiple chapters or klaverns

— Membership is estimated at 5,000, mostly in the South and Midwest

— Members are headed by an Imperial Wizard and wear white robes, masks and conical hats

— The KKK initially focused on anger against African-Americans, terrorising them through race riots, lynchings and other killings

— It later attacked Jews, Catholics, homosexuals and immigrants. By the 1920s it had four million members

— In the 1960s the KKK systematically murdered at least 15 black civil rights leaders

— The KKK’s website claims that white people face genocide

— In November 2008 a jury awarded $2.5 million to a Kentucky teenager who was beaten severely by klan members who believed mistakenly that he was an illegal immigrant

Sources: Anti-Defamation League, Southern Poverty Law Centre

The Times