A 28-year-old Virginia college student was ordered held without bail Friday on federal charges he was part of a group of radical environmentalists who firebombed a Southern Oregon lumber mill office, toppled a high tension electric line and torched a Clatskanie tree farm.

Dressed in jail fatigues and shackled around the ankles, Stanislas "Jack" Meyerhoff, a student at Piedmont Community College in Charlottesville, Va., responded in a quiet voice, "Yes, your honor," when asked if he understood the 17 counts of arson, conspiracy and destruction of property that could send him to prison for life. About 5-foot-6 and 140 pounds, Meyerhoff was clean-shaven with short brown hair.

Meyerhoff was one of six people arrested Wednesday in five states on federal charges they took part in a series of attacks in Oregon and Washington dating back from 1998 to 2001.

In Arizona, Sarah Kendall Harvey is one of two Arizona residents charged with ecoterrorism attacks in the Northwest. Harvey, 28, was arrested Wednesday and charged in connection with a December 1998 fire at U.S. Forest Industries in Medford. The blaze caused damages estimated at $500,000. Conviction could bring Harvey a 20-year sentence.

The U.S. Forest Industries headquarters was located at 2611 Whittle Ave., Medford. It served as headquarters for the firm’s mills, including a White City veneer mill, a Grants Pass plywood mill, a stud mill in Colorado and a sawmill in Florida.

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The Earth Liberation Front and Animal Liberation Front, shadowy radical environmental groups, took responsibility for some of the attacks, but authorities have not said that any of the people arrested was directly connected with either group. A seventh person has been indicted but not yet arrested.

Meyerhoff and Daniel Gerard McGowan, 31, of New York, N.Y., are accused of setting fire to the Superior Lumber Co. office in Glendale on Jan. 21, 2001. The fire destroyed the 6,000-square-foot building, causing some $400,000 in damage.

McGowan was denied bail Friday in New York and will be brought to Oregon by U.S. marshals, said McGowan's attorney, Martin Stoler. McGowan has been charged with arson and possession of an incendiary device, he said.

Both fires occurred at night when no one was working.

U.S. Magistrate Thomas Coffin entered innocent pleas on Meyerhoff’s behalf, and appointed local attorney Richard Fredericks to represent him. Fredericks said he could not comment on the case. A status hearing was set for Jan. 3.

The indictment read in court accused Meyerhoff of planning and carrying out an attack on a Bonneville Power Administration high tension electric line tower about 25 miles east of Bend on the night of Dec. 30, 1999. The two women named were Chelsea D. Gerlach, 28, who was arrested Wednesday in Portland and Josephine Overaker, who remains at large.

The other Arizona resident who has been indicted is William C. Rodgers, 40, of Prescott. He was charged with a June 1998 arson at an animal and plant inspection facility in Olympia. Rodgers runs a bookstore in downtown Prescott called the Catalyst Infoshop.

Meanwhile, details of the life of one of the accused began to emerge Friday.

Harvey previously pleaded guilty twice to misdemeanors concerning an anti-logging protest and a railroad trespass, records show.

In a job application, Harvey acknowledged having pleaded guilty in 1997 to three misdemeanors after being arrested "at a nonviolent anti-logging protest," saying an attorney had counseled her to do enter the plea "because I was in a very conservative area."

She said she was "making pancakes and serving them to other protesters" at the protest.

The 1999 conviction was for trespassing on Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad company property, she said.

Harvey began working this fall at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff after stints with two nonprofit organizations in Tucson and before that, a nonprofit group in Eureka, Calif. Using the name Kendall Tankersley, Harvey took a as an administrative secretary with the Human Development Institute at NAU.

NAU spokesman Tom Baurer said Harvey was hired at the university Oct. 28, and had been granted admission into its graduate college but had not signed up for classes yet.