A 65-year-old security guard was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison by Spain’s High Court for considering assassinating Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez on a far-right WhatsApp chat in 2018 and for carrying illegal guns.

According to a court document released on Tuesday, Manuel Murillo Sanchez was sentenced to two and a half years in prison for attempted murder and five years in prison for possession of war weapons. For the following eight years, he was also forbidden from possessing firearms.

He can appeal the sentence. His lawyer did not immediately return calls seeking comment.

In August 2018, Murillo offered to “hunt down” Sanchez “like a deer and put his head on a chimney” after the Spanish government ordered former dictator Francisco Franco’s body exhumed from a state mausoleum outside Madrid.

Even though Franco’s rule ended with his death in 1975, Spanish public opinion is still divided over the 1936-1939 Spanish Civil War, which tore apart families and communities, and the legacy of the ensuing dictatorship.

Over the past 20 years, the attempts of left-wing governments to eliminate the dictatorship’s remnants have prompted the ire of far-right fringe groups nostalgic for the era.

On the chats, Murillo also asked for help to organise an attack and bragged about the guns he owned and his ability as a sharpshooter. “I’m a sniper and with an accurate shot Sanchez is over,” he said.

The judges dismissed Murillo’s defence that he was drunk when making those comments. He has already spent two years in preventive custody between September 2018 and September 2020, when he was released ahead of the ruling.