A federal judge on Tuesday allowed a man accused of firebombing a mosque in Corvallis to be released to home detention.
After two days of arguments and testimony in U.S. District Court in Eugene, Magistrate Judge Thomas Coffin ordered Cody Crawford released under the supervision of his mother. His trial was set for September.
Crawford has been held since August in the 2010 firebombing that burned an office in the Salman Alfarisi Islamic Center in Corvallis, where Somali-born student Mohamed Osman Mohamud sometimes worshipped.
The fire came two days after Mohamud’s arrest in an FBI sting at a Portland Christmas tree lighting ceremony. Mohamud is charged with using a loaned cellphone to dial a phone number that he thought would detonate explosives in a van near the tree.
Police said someone broke a window at the mosque two days later and threw in a container with a flammable liquid.
Crawford was indicted on charges of damaging religious property for racial reasons, which is a hate crime, and using fire to commit a felony.
Court documents show that three weeks after the mosque firebombing, in unrelated encounters with police, Crawford ranted about Muslims, said Christians are capable of jihad and told an officer he resembled President Barack Obama.
The documents said Crawford told officers “only Christians could understand him, that he was a Christian warrior that they were persecuting,” and that “you will never know the truth about the mosque.”