A pipe bomb exploded at a mosque in north Florida May 10 and is being investigated as a possible hate crime. The FBI says they have few leads, and have joined the mosque and a nearby church in offering a $20,000 reward for information.
The bomb went off during evening prayers, when about 60 people were at the Islamic Center of Northeast Florida in Jacksonville. No one was injured.
The FBI, however, says it could have caused serious injuries and deaths had the bomb been placed inside the mosque instead of outside. The explosion blasted shrapnel 100 feet away.
“It was a dangerous device,” said James Casey, the special agent in charge of the Jacksonville field office. “Had anybody been around it they could have been seriously injured or killed. We want to emphasize the seriousness of the thing and not let people believe that this was just a match and a little bit of gasoline that was spread around.”
The culprit is likely to face arson charges, and could face domestic terrorism or hate crime charges as well, according to news reports. Whoever made the bomb would have had to have “at least a rudimentary knowledge of bomb making,” according to the FBI.
The FBI is searching for a man seen on a surveillance video just before the bomb went off, carrying a gas can. The man appears to be middle aged and white.
They’re also looking for another “person of interest,” a different man who came to the mosque on April 4 and screamed epithets.
The mosque, along with the FBI and a Christian church located across the street from the mosque, are offering a reward totaling $20,000 for information leading to an arrest.
The FBI released a demonstration video showing what the force of the explosion from a similar pipe bomb looks like.
The director of the Council for American-Islamic Relations has lashed out at the national media for not giving the story more coverage.
“It is disturbing that, outside the state of Florida, our fellow citizens are largely unaware of the fact that a potentially-deadly bomb exploded at an American house of worship,” said CAIR National Executive Director Nihad Awad. “One can only imagine the public and media response if someone with a Muslim name was the perpetrator of this apparent terror attack.”
