FBI Arrests Alleged Ecoterrorist in Ore.

By TYPH TUCKER
The Associated Press
Monday, March 15, 2004; 4:20 PM

PORTLAND, Ore. - A fugitive radical environmentalist has been arrested by federal officials on charges of setting fire to logging and cement trucks in 2001, the FBI announced Monday.

Michael Scarpitti has been on the FBI's most-wanted list since disappearing two years ago. He is among four activists charged with setting logging trucks on fire on June 1, 2001, to protest logging on the slopes of Mount Hood.

Three other suspects were captured after one of them told a girlfriend about the crime, according to arrest papers. The girlfriend's father is a deputy state fire marshal.

Scarpitti is also accused of taking part in an April 15, 2001 arson attack that damaged three cement trucks at Ross Island Sand & Gravel in Portland.

Scarpitti, also known as Tre Arrow, has had connections with the Earth Liberation Front, a loose group of activists that the FBI has classified as an eco-terrorist group.

The FBI lists the organization as its No. 1 domestic terrorism priority.

Scarpitti first gained notoriety in July 2000 when he scaled a U.S. Forest Service building in downtown Portland and lived on a ledge for 11 days to protest timber policies.

In October 2001, he suffered several broken bones when he fell 60 feet from a hemlock tree where he had perched to protest a logging sale in Oregon's Tillamook County.

On June 1 of that year arsonists firebombed trucks at Schoppert Logging Co. in Estacada, a small town between Portland and Mount Hood.

Three suspects were arrested. One of them, Jacob Sherman, was sentenced to more than three years in prison in 2003 after pleading guilty.

Sherman "immediately began to cooperate" with investigators after his arrest, according to court documents, and pointed investigators toward others involved in the bombings.

Court documents filed by Sherman's attorney identify Arrow as "the leader and instigator" of the arsons.

Arrow "groomed" Sherman, the documents claim, introducing him to radical protesting. Sherman was a student at Portland State University at the time.

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