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A federal judge on Thursday sentenced a man who set 

Jackie Rahm Little pleaded guilty in September

 to arson and hate crime charges for setting fire to Masjid Al Rahma on Bloomington Avenue in 2023. He also admitted setting a trash can on fire at another mosque a day earlier.

U.S. District Judge Ann Montgomery handed down a nearly six-year sentence plus three years of supervised release to Jackie Rahm Little. 

Little addressed the court and said, “I want to apologize to the Muslim community …I’m very, very sorry.” He also said he was under a schizophrenic episode.

His defense attorney James Becker said Little had been diagnosed for the first time with schizophrenia early on in his case. He was arrested in April 2023.

Montgomery allowed prosecutors to move ahead with the case only after Little received treatment while in custody.

The judge called schizophrenia “a horrible disease.” 

In court Thursday, she said in her 50 years as a career prosecutor and a federal judge, “sentencing hasn’t gotten easier.” She said she doesn’t have any clear answers but is guided by looking at the individual and the victims.

“I do know many of us are thinking more carefully about our constitutional rights,” including religious freedom, Montgomery said.

The judge said arson “is a very serious crime, a very serious crime.” Then, she added, “arson is so destructive in so many ways.” 

She also noted that Little had committed the crime once and then again the next day. 

Assistant U.S. Attorney Kristian Weir, who stood in for prosecutor Evan Gilead, said he agreed with the sentence.

"It's what we were advocating for. So we believe it was absolutely the right decision. I think it speaks to a real need in the state to respond to the violence that we've been seeing,” Weir said. “And it is our office's position that there is no place in Minnesota for religious hatred, political hatred, racial hatred.”

Jaylani Hussein, the executive director of CAIR-Minnesota, addressed the judge as an advocate and a victim. He was at Masjid Al Rahma in 2023 when the fire was set. No one was killed or physically injured in either arson.

He said adults and children in day care had to be evacuated from the mosque.  

Montgomery said there was “lot of fortuity in this case.”

In arguing for a 70-month sentence, Gilead wrote that the attacks created lasting trauma among Muslims and eroded the community's sense of safety and stability. 

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Regina Medina

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Jackie Rahm Little pleaded guilty in September to arson and hate crime charges for setting fire to Masjid Al-Rahma on Bloomington Avenue in 2023. He also admitted setting a trash can on fire at another mosque a day earlier.

Judge sentences man for setting fire to Minneapolis mosques

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