By Kanishka Singh<\/p>\n
WASHINGTON, Aug 6 (Reuters) – The U.S. Department of Justice said on Thursday a man charged \u200cin connection to a mid-July fire at the Northeast \u200cPhiladelphia Islamic Center had targeted the house of worship because it was \u200ba mosque.<\/p>\n
DETAILS:<\/p>\n
\u2022 Vincent Lang, 60, “was charged by indictment with one count of malicious damage by means of fire to a building used in interstate commerce and one count of damage \u200cto religious real property,” \u2060the DOJ said in a statement.<\/p>\n
\u2022 The indictment alleged “Lang carried out the act because of \u2060the religious character of that property, that is, because it was a mosque.”<\/p>\n
\u2022 The defendant has been detained in federal \u200bcustody since \u200bhis mid-July arrest, the DOJ \u200bsaid<\/p>\n
\u2022 The indictment alleges \u200cthat, in the early hours of July 5, Lang maliciously damaged and destroyed, and attempted to damage and destroy, by means of fire, the Northeast Philadelphia Islamic Center.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Local media reported no one was injured in the incident.<\/p>\n
\u2022 If \u200cconvicted, Lang faces a maximum penalty \u200bof 40 years in prison, with \u200ba mandatory minimum of \u200bfive years’ imprisonment, the DOJ said.<\/p>\n
\u2022 A \u200crepresentative of Lang could not \u200bbe reached for \u200bcomment.<\/p>\n
\u2022 U.S. rights advocates have noted rising Islamophobia in the decades following the September 11, 2001 attacks, and \u200bmore recently because \u200cof anti-immigration policies, white supremacy and the fallout from \u200bIsrael’s war in Gaza.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in \u200bWashington; Editing by Christopher Cushing)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Kanishka Singh WASHINGTON, Aug 6 (Reuters) – The U.S. Department of Justice said on Thursday a man…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":260928,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[2896,110616,69,71,70,11424,105110],"class_list":["post-260927","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-indictment","tag-malicious-damage","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news","tag-u-s-department-of-justice","tag-vincent-lang"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260927","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=260927"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260927\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/260928"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=260927"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=260927"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=260927"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}