A Tennessee man has been sentenced to nearly 20 years behind bars for seeking to recruit others to burn down a New York mosque, the Justice Department announced Thursday.
Robert Doggart, 65, of Signal Mountain was sentenced to 235 months for seeking to recruit others on the internet to burn down the Islamberg mosque.
Islamberg, a small hamlet in central New York, is home to a large Muslim community.
Doggart was convicted in February of soliciting a person to violate federal civil rights and for arson solicitation.
“People of all faiths have the fundamental right to worship freely, and this administration will not tolerate attempts to violate that right,” Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a statement. "The defendant solicited people to commit acts of violence in an effort to a community simply because of its Islamic faith."
Doggart ran for federal office in 2014, finishing with less than ten percent of the vote in the eastern Tennessee district.
In a separate development, the Justice Department announced Gerald Wallace, 35, of Florida is being indicted by a grand jury on a hate crime charge for threatening to shoot congregants at a Miami Gardens, Florida mosque.
"The defendant is alleged to have left a message against Islam, the Mohammed, and the Koran, during which he threatened to go to the mosque, and stated, 'I'm gonna shoot all ,'" the Justice Department said.
Wallace is now charged with obstructing the free exercise of religion and sending threatening messages across state lines.
