Authorities in the US state of Georgia have arrested 23 people and charged them with “domestic terrorism” after what they described as a “coordinated attack” on an Atlanta site where a police training center was under construction. Among those arrested is a lawyer for the Southern Poverty Law Center, a group advising the FBI on extremism. 

identified on Monday as Thomas Jurgens, a staff attorney with the SPLC, a self-styled civil rights organization.

“This wasn’t about a public training center; this was about anarchy,” Atlanta police told reporters on Sunday evening, describing how “violent agitators” used the cover of a music festival to attack the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center construction site.

“large rocks, bricks, Molotov cocktails, and fireworks,” the police said, providing a video of the incident from the security cameras.

“Cop City will never be a legitimate project,” the organization said in a statement on Sunday evening, as quoted by the local outlet WSB-TV. “We stand steadfast in our conviction to build a new world in which all people are safe from police terror.”

“Yikes,” Congressman Rich McCormick, a Georgia Republican, tweeted in response. His colleague from North Carolina, Dan Bishop, wondered if the SPLC would now list itself as a “hate group.”

“a well-known, established and credible” organization that has provided briefings and advice since 2009. The FBI confirmed it “continues to have a relationship with the SPLC,” even though it is supposed to reevaluate relations with outside groups “as necessary to ensure the appropriateness of any interaction.”

“anti-Muslim extremist” promoting “hate-based violence.”