A former University of Wisconsin-Madison graduate student threatened students, staffers and professors at the university and told some of them via email before traveling to the US last week that he intended to kill their children, according to court documents .
Arvin Raj Mathur, 32, was in Michigan’s St. Clair County Jail on Sunday following his arrest following a trip from Copenhagen, where he is enrolled in a university, court documents and online prison records show.
Federal agents arrested Mathur Friday night at Detroit Metropolitan Airport and he is being held temporarily without bail, The Detroit News reported. He is scheduled for a hearing on Tuesday.
Court records show that Mathur “knowingly transmitted interstate and foreign trade messages that contained threats to injure other persons”.
Mathur, a former graduate student in the Anthropology Department, is facing charges of interstate or foreign threat of injury after authorities say he mailed threats from outside the U.S. to nine Wisconsin residents, court records show. He first appeared in federal court in Detroit on Saturday.
Weeks ago, a man shot dead three students and wounded five others on the campus of Michigan State University.
Mathur is accused of threatening nine people, most of them graduate students, staff or professors on the Madison campus. Among those emails was one to an anthropology professor in which he said two of the other people he had threatened “should sue me right away,” authorities said.
“Otherwise I will kill their children. Call the police and a lawyer or I will kill their children and hide their meat in their hamburger meat,” he added in the email, court documents show.
Authorities have accused him of sending another email to an assistant professor in the department of anthropology at the University of Wisconsin with the subject line: “We’re going to kill your daughters.” That person told officials that “he found the email disturbing and that he feared for his family’s safety,” according to court documents.
An anthropology professor told authorities that Mathur sent her an email in late February with the subject line, “We’re going to kill your family,” leaving her frightened and concerned for her family’s safety, according to court documents.
Federal prosecutors have sued Mathur in Wisconsin’s Western Division, the U.S. district court. The Detroit News reported that Mathur’s court-appointed attorney is Amanda Bashi. She did not immediately respond to messages asking for comment.
