Three men from unincorporated Clarence, a town 35 miles north of Urbana, are accused of setting off a pipe bomb at a mosque just outside of Minneapolis last August.

CLARENCE, Ill. (AP) — A former sheriff's deputy and purported ringleader in the bombing of a Minnesota mosque emerges in court documents as a sometimes-threatening figure with anti-government views who also wrote books and attracted others into his shadowy group.

Three Ford County men have been charged with arson in the bombing last year of a mosque in suburban Minneapolis.