US authorities have arrested a man accused of setting fires at two Minneapolis mosques last week and charged him with arson, an act that the city’s police chief described as a “hate crime” aimed at instilling fear in the local Muslim community.
A federal complaint alleged that Jackie Little, 36, entered the Masjid Omar Islamic Center on 23 April wearing a black jacket, blue jeans and a blue medical mask and lit a cardboard box on fire in the center’s second-floor bathroom. An employee reportedly chased Little out of the location.
