Three men charged with
plotting to bomb an apartment building in western Kansas where Muslim
immigrants from Somalia lived and had a mosque pleaded not guilty on Monday but
remained in jail, prosecutors said.

Curtis Allen, 49, Gavin
Wright, 49, and Patrick Eugene Stein, 47, were each charged on Friday with one
count of conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction in Garden City, Kansas.

The three were arraigned
in federal court in Wichita on Monday, where lawyers entered not guilty pleas
on their behalf, said James Cross, spokesman for Tom Beall, acting U.S.
attorney for the District of Kansas.

Wright and Stein will
have detention hearings on Friday and Allen next week to determine if they should
remain in jail while the case is pending, Cross said. If convicted, the
defendants face a maximum sentence of life in federal prison.

Stein’s lawyer, Edward
Robinson, and Wright’s lawyer, Kari Schmidt, did not immediately return calls
seeking comment. Kirk Redmond, public defender for Allen, also did not return a
call.

The three men are accused
of stockpiling guns and explosives in preparation for bombing an apartment
complex where 120 people lived, including the Somalians.

They intended to park a vehicle
at each corner of the apartment complex and detonate them, according to the
charges. Garden City is a town of about 27,000 people in southwestern Kansas.

The men were being
investigated as part of a domestic terrorism probe of several militia groups in
southwestern Kansas, according to an FBI affidavit accompanying the charges.
Those groups had anti-government, anti-Muslim and anti-immigration beliefs, the
affidavit said.