Gambian Man Jailed For Burning A US Mosque

A U.S court has sentenced a 26 year old Gambian man to 20 years in jail for setting fire to a mosque in Marietta, Georgia.
Tamsir Lucien Mendy was last week sentenced by a judge after pleading guilty and he “is currently housed at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison in Jackson.’’
He will serve at least half of the sentence [10 years] behind bars, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported on Tuesday.
He was arrested on 26 July, 2010 and charged with the arson of “an estimated $100,000 worth of damage to the Islamic Center of Marietta.”
The arson was thought a hate crime before Mendy’s arrest but investigations later revealed he was upset by a split in the congregation.
“He felt like they couldn’t worship properly together and were upset with each other and this was his way, of burning one mosque to bring the two mosques together,” Scott Tucker, assistant fire chief for the Marietta Fire Department was quoted by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.