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Missouri man gets five years in prison
for mosque, clinic fires
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 [October 19, 2016]
(Reuters) - A Missouri man was
sentenced in federal court on Tuesday to five years and three months in
prison for setting a fire that destroyed a mosque and two attempted
arson attacks of a Planned Parenthood clinic, prosecutors said.
Jedediah Stout, 32, of Joplin, Missouri, pleased guilty in April to
setting fire to the Islamic Society of Joplin mosque in August 2012. He
also pleaded guilty to targeting Joplin's Planned Parenthood Clinic in
two separate but unsuccessful arson attacks in October 2013, according
to a statement from the U.S. Justice Department.
Stout's lawyer could not immediately be reached for comment.
Stout told investigators he did not like Islam as a religion and he
targeted the Planned Parenthood clinic because it provided reproductive
health services, prosecutors said.
"This sentence sends a clear message that violence targeting where
people worship or access reproductive health care services violates
federal law and carries severe consequences," Vanita Gupta, the head of
the Justice Department's civil rights division, said in the statement.
The Justice Department said that Stout would also have to pay nearly
$702,000 in restitution.
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Joplin is located in Missouri's southwest corner, around 150 miles
(241 km) south of Kansas City. A post on the Joplin mosque's website
at the time of the fire said that it was the only Muslim house of
worship within a 50-mile radius.
Stout threw a backpack containing an accelerant onto the Planned
Parenthood facility's roof and then lit material attached to the
accelerant on Oct. 3 and Oct. 4, 2013, prosecutors said. Both of the
arson attempts were captured on surveillance video and Stout was
subsequently apprehended.
Stout told investigators he used the same type of incendiary device
that destroyed the mosque on Aug. 6, 2012, prosecutors said.
(Reporting by Timothy Mclaughlin in Chicago, Editing by Ben Klayman
and Alan Crosby)
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