In addition to Hari, authorities charged Joe Morris, 22, and Michael McWhorter, 29. All three men live in Clarence, a community with a population of just a few dozen people encircled by farm fields. During a reporter's visit on Wednesday, at least four homes displayed Confederate flags — one flying high atop a flagpole in a front yard.



It isn't clear why the men targeted a mosque in Minnesota, though Al-Farooq had been in the headlines in recent years.



A group of young Minnesota men who were convicted of conspiring to travel to Syria to join the Islamic State Group had frequented the mosque. A young woman and at least one of the men who successfully got to Syria also worshipped there. Mosque leaders were never accused of any wrongdoing.



Hari fled the U.S. in the early 2000s to live in Mexico and then the small South American nation of Belize, taking his two teenage daughters with him for fear his ex-wife would gain custody, according to media reports of legal proceedings against him after he returned to the U.S. in 2006. He was convicted of child abduction and given probation.



The case put Hari on television.



Dr. Phil McGraw of the "Dr. Phil" talk show used an investigator to help track down Hari in Belize, shortly before Hari came back to face charges of abducting his kids.



He wrote a handful of self-published books, including essays on religion. One was titled "Resurgence: More than Conquerors." Another was "Beowulf: A Novel of the Norsemen," which was listed as the first in a series.



Hari belonged to the Old German Baptist Brethren, a religious sect that shares some beliefs with the Amish, although its followers do not spurn modern technology, according to 2006 coverage of his trial published in the News-Gazette in Champaign, about 30 miles south of Clarence.



Some of Hari's neighbors told Champaign television station WCIA that Hari frightened them. One neighbor said Hari gave her "the heebie-jeebies."



His criminal record includes a charge of assaulting a neighbor who entered his property in July, when he allegedly held the man down and pointed a pellet gun at his head. Then in February, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives received an anonymous tip about explosives on that neighbor's property.



Authorities found explosives, including a pipe bomb, which McWhorter said he, Hari and Morris planted to discredit the neighbor who reported the assault, according to court documents. Hari allegedly called in the phony tip.



In a March 10 video, just days before his arrest, Hari went to YouTube again and posted as "Illinois Patriot," saying FBI and local law enforcement investigators had "run wild" and were terrorizing Clarence.



He asked "freedom-loving people everywhere to come and help us."