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Arson!

Three students arrested over nine church arsons in Alabama started some of the fires as a joke, officials say.

Two 19-year-olds and a 20-year-old appeared in a federal court on Wednesday and were remanded in custody pending a hearing.

One of them, Benjamin Nathan Moseley, admitted arson, court papers say.

The nine arson attacks, at the beginning of February, destroyed five Baptists churches and damaged four. No-one was injured.

Governor Bob Riley said there did not appear to be "any type of conspiracy against organised religion".

"The faith-based community can rest a little easier," he said.

Arson Tire markings

Federal investigators say the first five fires, on 3 February, were started as "a joke that got out of hand".

Tyre tracks reportedly led agents to one of the suspect's homes

The other blazes, on 7 February, are reported to have been set "as a diversion to throw investigators off".

Agents are said to have traced tyre markings found at some of the churches to Matthew Lee Cloyd's parents, who admitted their son "knew who did it and he was there", court papers say.

The other two suspects, Benjamin Nathan Moseley and Russell Lee DeBusk Jr, both 19, are due to attend a hearing on Friday.

A decade ago, 30 churches with mainly black congregations in south-east US were set alight in suspected racially-motivated attacks.

But officials had earlier said that in the February incidents there was no racial pattern.

Arson

Arson, called fireraising in Scots law, is the crime of setting a fire for an unlawful or improper purpose. The criminal damage of property in English law has been consolidated into a single offence in the Criminal Damage Act 1971 although the use of the word has been retained.

The Skyline Parkway Motel at Rockfish Gap after an arson fire on July 9, 2004.The motives of arsonists vary. The possibility of financial gain often drives arsonists to file fraudulent insurance claim after setting fire.

Vandalism is frequently behind arsons perpetrated by juvenile fire setters. Vandalism through fire can occur in vacant or abandoned buildings. Cities often regulate or encourage owners to secure vacant buildings. Fire departments aggressively attack fires in abandoned buildings out of concern transient or homeless people may be dwelling inside.

Domestic violence sometimes results in arson. Victims’ property is often damaged or destroyed, compromising physical safety and sometimes causing personal injury. In some cases arson can also be a method of committing murder. Revenge motivation can generate dangerous fires, as a fire setter’s acts of rage contributes to the conflagration. Disgruntled firefighters have occasionally been known to start arson out of revenge, especially those extremely angry at losing their jobs or who have numerous grievances with a fire station and hope that the fire chief or other superiors may perish in the arson fire they started.

Some arsonists set fires that allow them to appear as heroes, rescuing endangered people or extinguishing the fire themselves. The "hero effect" is most often committed by firefighters who are bored with the lack of fires or are seeking commendation for extinguishing their own arson acts.

Man-made forest fires are frequent in the summers of the Galicia region of Spain. Several causes are proposed, including the change of commonal property to government-owned forests, sales of cheap burnt wood, envies against neighbors, intention to sell the land for urban development, disgruntled former firefighters, and distraction of the police by drug smugglers.

Some acts of arson are politically motivated. For example, an environmental group known as the Earth Liberation Front committed arson to spread its message of environmental protection. The Nazis allegedly burned down the parliamentary building of the German Empire in the 1933 Reichstag fire. The incident gave the Nazi Party an excuse to introduce the Reichstag Fire Decree, one of the key steps which eventually led to the Nazi control of Germany.

It is often incorrectly believed that Roman emperor Nero ordered the Great Fire of Rome, which erupted on the night of July 18, 64CE. The fire started from the shops selling flammable goods at the southeastern end of the Circus Maximus and reportedly lasted for nine days.

Arson Popular culture

The movie Backdraft centers on the relationships of firefighters confronting a series of arson fires.

The HBO original movie Point of Origin, which is based on a book by Joseph Wambaugh about John Orr, a former fire investigator and convicted serial arsonist, tells the true story of an arson investigator (Ray Liotta) searching for the perpetrator of a string of deadly fires in 1980s California. The films presents the methods the arsonist uses to start the fires The film makes use of backward trick photography to show the 'Point of Origin' of every fire that the arsonist started.

PBS also created a one hour long television show about arson, focusing, like HBO, on John Orr. The show, "Hunt for the Serial Arsonist," features interviews with John Orr from prison as it follows the story of investigators trying to track down a serial arsonist. It explores a few of the techniques that fire investigators use, and motives that arsonists have in setting fires.

In the CBS TV show NUMB3RS, a C.S.I. investigation of an arson-related fire at an SUV dealership and other buildings involves finding a college-age arsonist and who persuaded him to do it. The episode also featured Bill Nye ("The Science Guy") as a special guest.

The British TV drama series London's Burning, based on the activities of the London Fire Brigade, also shows cases of arson.

Arson, literally and figuratively, is a major theme of Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events and is recurringly employed by the villainous Count Olaf and his associates, often referenced in the series' complex backstory and increasingly committed by the books' protagonists. Each act of arson is portrayed as a tragedy, but as the Baudelaire orphans mature, the arsonists' motivations are increasingly understood to be complex and not wholly evil.

Much of the first season of Six Feet Under deals with a case of arson.

In Stephen King's Carrie, a girl with telekinesis uses her power to commit arson to her entire home town, after being picked on at her school prom. There is also a definition, 'to pull a Carrie', meaning to commit arson, used in the book.

In the Japanese OVA FLCL, the character Mamimi is an arsonist because of her addiction to a videogame that involves the starting of fires on an apocalyptic town.