Attorney: Mosque threats outside client's character

TAMPA, Fla. (AP) — The attorney for a Florida man accused of threatening to firebomb a mosque says his client has no criminal record or history of violence.

Bryant Camareno says the accusations against 43-year-old Martin Alan Schnitzler of Seminole are “outside of his character.”

According to court documents, Schnitzler left a voicemail for the Islamic Center of Pinellas County in the hours after the attacks in Paris, threatening to firebomb it and “shoot whoever is there.”

FBI investigators deemed the threats not credible.

Camareno tells The Tampa Tribune that Schnitzler wants to reach out to “people of the Islamic faith, to show that’s not who he is.”