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LAPD officers swarmed and handcuffed what they described as a "person of interest" in the Los Angeles arsonist spree that has left thousands of residents scared out of their wits for days. Fire officials say "it is too early to speculate" if this is the person responsible for the fires. Police have already released surveillance video showing the alleged suspect -- a ponytailed Steven Seagal lookalike (below). As you can see in our video ... the man in custody sports a ponytail Cops previously said 39 fires could be linked to the recent rash of arsons ... and another...

SALT LAKE CITY — There was a lot of contention in federal court Thursday over whether Walter Bond rose to the level of a "serial arsonist." But U.S. District Judge Ted Stewart didn't seem that confused before sentencing the 35-year-old to more than seven years in prison — 12 considering that Stewart ordered the sentence to run consecutive with a five-year sentence handed down for arson in Colorado. "I will be the first to admit that I am a serial arsonist," the judge said, quoting something Bond wrote in February. "He does take pride (in what he's done). The court...

An Oakland woman has admitted taking part in a radical environmental group's arson attacks on a University of Washington research center and a Northern California corral, in a plea agreement calling for a four-year prison sentence. Briana Waters, 35, pleaded guilty Tuesday in federal court in Tacoma, Wash., to arson and related charges in the May 2001 firebombing of the university's Center for Urban Horticulture in Seattle. She also acknowledged acting as a lookout for arsonists who set fires at a government corral for wild horses and burros near Susanville (Lassen County) in September 2001. Waters, a violin teacher with...

He is accused of violating the terms of his plea deal, and his attorney expects he will face drug charges. An arsonist-informant who helped convict 10 former associates on eco-terrorism charges in the 2004-07 federal “Operation Backfire” case apparently violated his federal probation by allegedly violating undisclosed state drug laws. Jacob Jeremiah Ferguson, 38, appeared briefly before U.S. District Magistrate Judge Thomas Coffin on Monday. During that status conference, Ferguson’s attorney asked that his client’s probation violation hearing not be scheduled for “at least three weeks” because of the state charges also before Ferguson. ... Ferguson acknowledged taking part in...

Walter Edmund Bond was taken into custody Thursday in Denver after allegedly telling an informant that he started the Glendale fire and two fires in Utah because they were businesses that "profited from animals." At the time of his arrest by FBI and ATF agents, Bond was carrying a backpack, according to an affidavit by Rennie Mora, a special agent for the ATF. Agents searched the backpack and found literature titled, "The Declaration of War - Killing People to Save the Animals and the Environment - Strike a Match Light a Fuse We've Only Have the Earth to Lose." Bond...

I don't understand the language the reporter is speaking, but after some investigation I found out that this arsonists was eventually caught. After the authorities saw the security tape, they checked the emergency rooms to see who turned up for medical attention for burns. After they checked the hospital records they found their man, or should I say arsonist. I love it when criminals make it easy for the police to find and convict them. Follow the link below to see theVideo of Arsonist Setting Himself on Fire While Torching a Business

I don't understand the language the reporter is speaking, but after some investigation I found out that this arsonists was eventually caught. After the authorities saw the security tape, they checked the emergency rooms to see who turned up for medical attention for burns. After they checked the hospital records they found their man, or should I say arsonist. I love it when criminals make it easy for the police to find and convict them. Follow the link below to see theVideo of Arsonist Setting Himself on Fire While Torching a Business

Note: Video included. SNIPPET: "New information tonight about the man who confessed to setting fire to a Southeast Austin hotel. Arson investigators here say the man is a Moroccan National who went to school at St. Edward's in the 90's and who hasn't lived in the United States in eight years. His motive for setting the fire remains a mystery tonight. Flames and billowing black smoke poured out of the America's Best Value Inn Sunday. A day later, hotel guests relived the harrowing moments as they escaped the fire." SNIPPET: "Investigators say 33-year-old Mohamed Lahlou, who checked into the hotel...

July marks the145th Anniversary of the Battle of Atlanta that marked the beginning of the end of the Southern people's quest for independence.

US President Barack Obama defended his administration's response to the economic crisis over the last six months, declaring: "The fire is now out." "I think that we have stepped back from the abyss. I think we've put out the fire," he said in an interview with PBS, according to a transcript released by the TV station. But Obama, who is facing declining popularity ratings for the first time in his presidency, said a lot remains to be done to fix the recession-mired US economy. "The analogy I use sometimes is, we had this beautiful house. And there was a fire....

LONDON (Reuters) – Police were hunting Monday a convicted arsonist who escaped from London's Pentonville prison by clinging to the underside of the security van that brought him there. Julien Chautard, 39, gave prison officers the slip shortly after he was counted off the van, newspapers reported. His disappearance Friday evening was not noticed before the van was cleared to drive out of the jail. It was only when CCTV footage was checked seven hours later that officers noticed a shadow under the van that had not been there before. Chautard had been sentenced earlier in the day at Snaresbrook...

THE public has been urged not to threaten the safety of an accused firebug scheduled to appear in court today on a deadly arson charge. A 39-year-old man accused of starting the Churchill-Jeerelang bushfire in Gippsland, in Victoria's east, has been remanded in custody and is due to appear in court today. "Coming to court and protesting is not an appropriate thing to do,'' Police Police Chief Commissioner Christine Nixon said today. "Obviously, we will make sure this person is well protected. "We hope that we don't have to deal with a gang of people who are angry and concerned...

The government says a 20-year prison sentence for a woman who committed arson at Michigan State University would be the toughest punishment ever in a case of so-called eco-terrorism. Marie Mason is due in federal court at 9 a.m. today. The explosion and fire at Michigan State's Agriculture Hall in 1999 was a protest against genetically modified crops. Damage exceeded $1 million. Prosecutors want a 20-year prison sentence for the 47-year-old Cincinnati woman. Mason's lawyer says that would be extreme. Mason has admitted other acts from 1999 through 2003, including fires at homes under construction in southeastern Michigan and Indiana....

A 23-year-old Michigan man faces up to 10 years in jail for illegally possessing bombs, which he allegedly intended to use to destroy the Xcel Energy Center during the Republican National Convention. Matthew Bradley DePalma, of Flint, Mich., was charged Aug. 30 with one count of possession of firearms. According to his criminal complaint, DePalma had several Molotov cocktails in his possession a week before the start of the RNC. DePalma had been under investigation by federal investigators after he attended a protester conference in Wisconsin in July. Officials said DePalma went to the Hennepin County Library on Aug. 18...

Terry Lynn Barton has been released from prison after serving a six-year term for starting the worst wildfire in Colorado's recorded history. Barton, 44, pleaded guilty to arson charges stemming from the 2002 Hayman Fire, which blackened 138,000 acres, destroyed 133 homes and forced more than 8,000 people to evacuate. She was a fire spotter for the U.S. Forest Service at the time

Lance Farber, the fire-starting, tomato-tossing boyfriend of new San Francisco Planning Director John Rahaim, is out of jail - but only after the city took him to the cleaners. Farber, who had been sitting in jail for almost six weeks on $1 million bail, pleaded guilty last week to one count of unlawfully and recklessly starting a fire and one count of vandalism with over $400 in damage. The 47-year-old New Age chiropractor was accused of setting a bed on fire and tossing an open can of tomatoes through the city's historic fire chief's house - staining the walls -...

Wednesday, May 23, 2007 The horrors facing a first offender locked up with hardened criminals in the nation's high-security federal prisons highlighted testimony Tuesday in the sentencing hearing of Stanislas Meyerhoff, the first of 10 defendants to be sentenced in the Operation Backfire prosecution of radical underground environmental activists. The hearing is expected to conclude today in Eugene before U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken, who will decide Meyerhoff's prison term and rule whether his crimes were acts of terrorism, a ruling that could bring a stiffer sentence. Through the day, prosecution and defense lawyers dueled over whether Meyerhoff was an...

EUGENE, Ore. – Declaring fires set at a police station, an SUV dealer and a tree farm acts of terrorism, a federal judge Wednesday sentenced the first of 10 members of a radical environmental group to 13 years in prison. U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken commended Stanislas Meyerhoff for having the courage to “do the right thing” by informing on his fellow arsonists after his arrest, but declared that his efforts to save the earth by setting fires were misguided and cowardly, and contributed to an unfair characterization of others working legally to protect the environment as radicals. “It was...

Some True Crime and we have two most unusual crimes of rape. One takes some insight to figure out, the other involves a false rape accusation. Yet another charge of rape, this time as dealt with by the Muslims of the world. HINT-the WOMAN gets punished. Also, how about Haggard? If hypocrisy were a crime he'd get the death penalty. Info on that California arsonist, and a dog gets showt but no one knows why. Finally, the crime was giving the President the finger. Should this school bus driver be fired for this form of free speech?

Church arsonists tied to Satanism College boys had dark side, dabbled in occult, say friends Posted: March 11, 2006 6:30 p.m. Eastern © 2006 WorldNetDaily.com While the "all-American college boys" arrested for a series of church arsons claimed they had committed their crimes for the fun of it – with no religious or political motivation – new reports from friends say the students dabbled in the occult and Satanism. Benjamin Moseley, Russell Debusk, Matthew Lee Cloyd Benjamin Moseley and Russell DeBusk, 19, were theater students at Birmingham-Southern College. Matthew Cloyd, 20, lived in the same dorm as DeBusk, an academic...

The arrests could begin to close the book on one of Colorado’s enduring mysteries. At the time, the Vail firebombing was considered the costliest act of eco-terrorism in the country, causing $12 million in damage, destroying the Two Elk Lodge, a mountaintop restaurant, among other structures. "The indictment tells a story of four-and-a-half years of arson, vandalism, violence and destruction claimed to have been executed on behalf of the Animal Liberation Front or Earth Liberation Front, extremist movements known to support acts of domestic terrorism," Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said at a news conference today. Appearing with Gonzales, FBI Director...

PHOENIX (AP) -- An Arizona bookstore owner charged in the firebombing of a government wildlife lab in Washington committed suicide in his jail cell Thursday, officials said. William C. Rodgers, 40, of Prescott, Ariz., suffocated after placing a plastic bag over his head while in a one-person cell in Flagstaff, the Coconino County medical examiner said. Rodgers was one of six people arrested earlier this month in connection with ecoterror attacks in Oregon and Washington in recent years. He was accused of setting fire to the Agriculture Department's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Services facility in Olympia, Wash., in 1998....

Father defends woman named in '98 Vail fires 'She's not even a vegetarian,' says dad in timber industry By Joe Garner, Rocky Mountain News December 16, 2005 SWEET HOME, Ore. - Federal authorities have the wrong woman in custody, says the father of an alleged eco-terrorist identified as a suspect in the 1998 fire bombings on Vail Mountain. The woman, Chelsea Gerlach, 28, of Portland, was named a suspect in the $12 million Vail arson case Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Eugene, Ore., during a hearing to set bail on two federal eco-terrorism charges against her in her home...

DNA Link Leads to Arrest of Suspected Serial Arsonist Washington (AP) - A two-year search for a serial arsonist in the capital region ended Wednesday with the arrest of a suspect believed responsible for more than 40 fires in the District of Columbia and its Maryland and Virginia suburbs. Thomas Sweatt, 50, was being questioned by agents of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Agents roped off a fast food restaurant along a busy Northeast Washington thoroughfare, where an employee arriving for work said that Sweatt was the manager. A worker at the combined KFC-Pizza Hut, who...

It's about the trees, foe of logging says Activist charged in firebombings denies FBI's 'terrorist' label By ANDREW KRAMER THE ASSOCIATED PRESS VICTORIA, B.C. -- For 19 months, Tre Arrow was one of the most wanted fugitives in North America -- he was accused of firebombing logging and cement trucks in Oregon and having links to a group of radical environmentalists viewed as terrorists by the FBI. Now he's in the Vancouver Island Regional Correctional Centre, facing charges of trying to shoplift bolt cutters. He has begun a hunger strike to protest what he calls injustices in the U.S. legal...

The FBI's capture of a prominent figure in what it calls the nation's worst domestic terrorist threat may do little to slow the radical environmental movement known as the Earth Liberation Front, federal authorities acknowledge. The suspect, Tre Arrow, also known as Michael Scarpitti and numerous other pseudonyms, is a charismatic figure who has run for political office before running from the law after being accused as the ringleader in a pair of environmentally motivated arson attacks. "It's a very big capture for us," said Beth Anne Steele, spokeswoman for the Portland, Ore., office of the FBI. "[The suspect has]...

What is the nationality of Dikran Armouchian sounds Turkish - is this a major story, if so, why is not now national? Genoman Authorities Arrest Suspected Arsonist Hikers In Eaton Canyon Reported Man POSTED: 10:04 p.m. PST October 28, 2003 ANGELES NATIONAL FOREST -- A man was arrested Tuesday after deputies caught him setting a fire in a steep, remote canyon filled with dry brush and large trees in the Angeles National Forest, according to sheriff detectives. Hikers in a remote trail about a half-mile north of the Eaton Canyon Bridge in Altadena saw a man making a fire there...

ANGELES NATIONAL FOREST -- A man was arrested Tuesday after deputies caught him setting a fire in a steep, remote canyon filled with dry brush and large trees in the Angeles National Forest, according to sheriff detectives. Hikers in a remote trail about a half-mile north of the Eaton Canyon Bridge in Altadena saw a man making a fire there and alerted authorities, sheriff's Detective Ed Nordskog said. Los Angeles County Parks officials and deputies arrived about 10 a.m. as the man was standing next to a fire about four feet in diameter. He warned the deputies to stay away...

Monaco Seeks Long Jail Term for Safra Nurse Mon Dec 2, 6:08 AM ET Add World - Reuters to My Yahoo! MONACO (Reuters) - Monaco's public prosecutor asked a court on Monday to sentence an American male nurse to 12 years in prison for starting a fire that killed billionaire banker Edmond Safra in the Mediterranean haven for the rich and famous. Defense attorneys for Ted Maher, a former U.S. soldier, were due to wrap up their case later on Monday. The verdict was expected in the evening. Lebanese-born Safra, a private banker who suffered from Parkinson's disease (news -...

Nation: Police say arsonist blames personalities for starting fires The Associated PressHANOVER, Pa. (March 30, 2002 7:11 p.m. EST) - A volunteer firefighter charged in seven arsons in York County told police he has multiple personalities, one of which he blamed for starting fires that he would later help put out, police said. Justin Yongue, 20, faces more than 39 felony charges in connection with arsons in the southern Pennsylvania county from Oct. 4 to Jan. 29. All the fires were in Penn and West Manheim townships, about 30 miles south of Harrisburg. No one was injured in the series...