WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 11th February, 2020) A 22-year-old man pleaded guilty of burning three African American churches to the ground during a ten-day period in 2019, recording the blazes and posting videos of the conflagrations on Facebook, the US Department of Justice said in a press release on Monday.
"At the plea hearing, Holden Matthews admitted that, between March 26 and April 4, 2019, he intentionally set fire to three Baptist churches with predominantly African-American congregations in the Opelousas, Louisiana area," the release said. "The fires Matthews set destroyed each of the church buildings."
Matthews admitted to setting the fires because of the religious character of these buildings, in an effort to raise his profile as a "black metal" musician by copying similar crimes committed in Norway in the 1990s.
Black metal first surfaced in Norway as an extreme heavy metal music platform for performers to express anti-Religion and anti-Christian views by advocating forms of white ethnic paganism.
