19 years for Gaza-protest academic who firebombed his way around the San Francisco Bay Area in a dress
A radical academic, enraged at the “genocide” he said was occurring in Gaza, was sentenced to 235 months’ imprisonment today for a campaign of arson and firebombing against government targets across the San Francisco Bay Area.
Over two weeks in June 2024, Dr Casey Goonan set fire to a University of California Police Department car, firebombed a federal building in Oakland, blockaded San Francisco federal courthouse, and set fires across the UC Berkeley campus.
“In this case when this defendant has chosen to broadly publicize his writings, his hatred of society and the community, I believe a significant sentence will hopefully send a message that acts of domestic terrorism are not to be tolerated,” said U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White this afternoon.
“I don’t believe for one moment,” the judge added, “that this defendant has one ounce of remorse for what he has done – he’s just sorry he got caught.”
White rejected the 188 month sentence recommended by the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Goonan, 35, had earlier pleaded guilty to one count of damaging or destroying a building or vehicle by fire or explosives. Prosecutors said he was a “highly educated, unrepentant domestic terrorist.”
The court was told that Molotov cocktails were Goonan’s weapon of choice in his terror attacks.
In the early hours of June 1 2024, Goonan placed six incendiary devices underneath a UCPD patrol car parked on the Berkeley campus intending to ignite the fuel tank.
On June 11, angered that his blockade of San Francisco federal courthouse had been broken by security staff the day before, he traveled to a federal building in Oakland and lobbed three Molotov cocktails into an office inside the building and smashed a window.
Over the following week he set fires at multiple buildings on the UC Berkeley campus.
FBI agents in San Francisco obtained security camera footage after one of the attacks in which Goonan prowls the Berkeley campus and at one point changes out of a skirt and into a dress.
In online ‘communiques’ Goonan labelled his attacks Operation Campus Flood which, prosecutors say, is an allusion to al-Aqsa Flood – the name used by Hamas in their deadly incursion into Israel in 2023.
“These actions, if multiplied and done en masse,” wrote Goonan in one such communique, “can create a decisive rupture condition, which has the potential to force the divestment of Bay Area college systems from ties to not only Israel the settler state, but ties with U.S. weapons manufacturers involved in militarization across the world. And, if they refuse, we should simply burn their shit down.”
In a blog post written almost immediately after the first attack, that was intended to be anonymous but which the FBI immediately traced to him, Goonan wrote that “[t]his act was done in retaliation against UCPD for their attack on students yesterday on a different campus and to retaliate against the University of California for its support for the zionist israel settler colony.”
“More specifically – this attempt to torch a police car in front of the university was in solidarity with our Palestinian siblings assaulted by the zionst state in Rafah. It came from a place of love for Palestine, and love for revolution and liberation of all oppressed people.”
“A life worth living is in solidarity with our [b]lack and [b]rown siblings continuously surviving and thriving in the face of genocidal violence here in the Bay Area,” he said.
“Death to amerikkka,” he concluded.
Prosecutors said Goonan was unrepentant. Four months after being arrested he was caught sending a letter which detailed his plan to escape from custody using one of his various medical conditions as a ruse. He misleadingly labeled correspondence ‘legal mail’ in an attempt to communicate privately with his radical leftwing supporters around the country.
The day after he pleaded guilty, in January this year, Goonan mailed a drawing to “an organization in Chicago” depicting a burning American flag, a dark hand holding a Molotov cocktail with 1312 (a code for ‘all cops are bastards’), and burning police cars and Israeli tank.
Today in courtroom five of Oakland federal courthouse, a visibly angry Judge Jeffrey White imposed a 235 month sentence – disregarding prosecutor Nikhil Bhagat’s plea that 188 months was plenty.
“I have to say that in over 20 years on the bench this is one of the most serious series of crimes that I have ever seen,” said Judge White.
“It is an assault on our educational institutions and this very court,” continued the judge. “They were callous. They would have resulted…in the death or maiming of some of our federal officers and bystanders.”
He ordered Goonan to pay $89,846 to the Regents of the University of California and $4,421 to the General Services Administration to compensate them for damage.
White’s decision to disregard prosecutors’ recommendation and impose a proper ‘guideline sentence’ – seldom seen in the Northern District of California – will raise more questions about U.S. Attorney Craig Missakian’s commitment to protecting public officials from attack in and around San Francisco.
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