BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – Three college students, including two aspiring actors known around campus as pranksters, were arrested yesterday in a string of nine church fires that spread fear across Alabama last month.

Federal agents said the defendants claimed that the first few blazes were set as “a joke”and that the others were started to throw investigators off the track.

Governor Bob Riley said the fires did not appear to be “any type of conspiracy against organized religion”or the Baptist faith. With the arrests, he said, “the faith-based community can rest a little easier.”

Benjamin Nathan Moseley and Russell Lee Debusk Jr., both 19-year-old students at Birmingham-Southern College, appeared in federal court and were ordered held on church arson charges pending a hearing Friday. Matthew Lee Cloyd, 20-year-old junior at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, was also arrested.

The fires broke out at five Baptist churches in Bibb County south of Birmingham on February 3 and four in west Alabama on February 7. The federal Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives agency had made the investigation its top priority, with scores of federal agents joining state and local officers.