Racist manifesto linked to Charleston shooting suspect

CHARLESTON, S.C. - Dylann Roof, the suspect in Wednesday's church massacre in Charleston, appears to have written a racist manifesto, posing in photographs with a handgun and standing in front of a Confederate military museum and plantation slave houses.

The photos and text surfaced on a website on Saturday. Reuters could not immediately confirm who created the website or the authenticity of the photographs posted on it. The Washington Post reported that U.S. officials have confirmed the website belonged to Roof.

Many of the local landmarks shown in the photos appeared chosen to highlight Charleston's segregated past and to touch a nerve with the city's black community by singling out sites with a special importance and sensitivity in African-American history.

Roof, a 21-year-old white man, was arrested on Thursday and charged with the murders of nine African-Americans at the Emanuel African Methodist Church in downtown Charleston. Authorities say he spent an hour in an evening Bible study group at the historically black church before opening fire on the parishioners.

The text posted on the site outlines the author's view of the superiority of white people and says they have no reason to feel guilt about the treatment of African-Americans. The author provides an "explanation" for taking some unspecified action.

"I have no choice ... I chose Charleston because it is most historic city in my state, and at one time had the highest ratio of blacks to Whites in the country."

Among the photos on the site are a close-up of a .45 caliber handgun, the same type of weapon that police say was used to carry out the church shootings.

Other images show a young man who strongly resembles Roof. One shows the man holding the handgun and a small Confederate flag. He is also pictured on a beach crouching by white supremacist symbols scrawled in the sand.

The website surfaced as mourners arrived in Charleston from around the United States on Saturday to pay their respects to those killed. Services were planned throughout the day ahead of a rally in Columbia, the state capital, later in the evening.

The massacre was the latest in the series of bloody mass shootings in the United State that have reignited a debate over gun control in a country where the right to own firearms is constitutionally protected.

President Barack Obama has called for gun law reforms, and in extracts of an interview posted on Saturday he blamed public apathy and what he called a tight "grip" on Congress of the National Rifle Association, the powerful U.S. gun lobby, for blocking stricter laws.

The killings were shattering to a city steeped in history. Charleston was an important port city during the American Civil War in the 1860's, pitting the breakaway Confederate states against the Union Army under the control of the U.S. federal government.

The main issue dividing the country was slavery, with the rebel Southern states insisting on their right to decide for themselves whether to allow a practice they saw as vital to their plantation economy.

CROWDS GATHER OUTSIDE CHURCH

The Emanuel African Methodist Church will reopen for worship on Sunday, Reverend Ronnie Brailsford, pastor of the Bethel African Methodist Church in Columbia said on Saturday. Church officials in Charleston could not be reached for comment.

Crowds gathered outside the church from early on Saturday. At the memorial site in front of the church, the oldest African-American congregation in the southern United States, flowers were laid six feet (two meters) deep in places.

Placards and signs offered words of solace and prayer but also frustration at another act of gun violence.

Monte Talmadge, a 63-year-old U.S. Navy veteran, drove nearly 300 miles (480 km) overnight from Raleigh, North Carolina, and sat in a camping chair across the street from the church.

"There was an overwhelming feeling that made me drive here," he said. "A church is a place of worship, not a place for killing."

At Wragg Mall in Charleston later on Saturday evening, a few hundred people gathered at a park to march down to the Emanuel church a few blocks away. Many were dressed in black and carried flowers to lay in front of the church.

South Carolina state representative Bakari Sellers spoke at the end of the march. "This terrorist did not win," Sellers said, with the crowd cheering and yelling.

About 1,500 demonstrators in the state capital Columbia, the majority of them white, called for the removal of the Confederate battle flag from the grounds of the state house because of what some people see as its racist associations.

The flag was removed from the roof of the state house in 2000 and placed on a monument to the confederate soldier near the legislature. Calls were growing for its removal.

(Writing by Edward Krudy; Additional reporting by Harriet McLeod in Charleston and Frank McGurty in New York; Editing by Frances Kerry and W Simon)

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Gunman kills 9 at black South Carolina church

CHARLESTON, S.C. - A white gunman was still at large after killing nine people during a prayer service at a historic African-American church in Charleston, South Carolina, the city's police chief said on Thursday, describing the attack as a hate crime.

Officers with dogs searched the streets for the suspect, whom police described as a 21-year-old white man with sandy hair wearing a sweatshirt, jeans and boots.

Gunfire erupted inside Emanuel AME Church in downtown Charleston on Wednesday night, Police Chief Gregory Mullen said.

The gunman had yet to be caught hours after the attack and was considered extremely dangerous, he said.

"To have an awful person come in and shoot them is inexplicable, obviously the most intolerable and unbelievable act possible," Charleston Mayor Joe Riley told reporters. "The only reason someone could walk into a church to shoot people praying is out of hate."

The shooting called to mind a 1963 bombing of an African-American church in Birmingham, Alabama, that killed four girls and galvanized the civil rights movement of the 1960s.

The Charleston church is one of the largest and oldest black congregations in the South, its website says. It has its roots in the early 19th century, and the current building, completed in 1891, is considered a historically significant building, according to the U.S. National Park Service.

The attack follows the April shooting of an unarmed black man in North Charleston by a white police officer. The officer has been charged with murder in that case, one of a number of deaths of unarmed black men in encounters with police that have raised racial tensions in the United States.

Soon after the shooting, a clutch of men stood in a circle in front of a hotel near the church, one of many landmark buildings in the city.

"We pray for the families, they've got a long road ahead of them," Reverend James Johnson, a local civil rights activist, said during the impromptu prayer service.

The FBI, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and other agencies have joined in the investigation, Mullen said.

Eight victims were found dead in the church, Mullen told reporters, and a ninth person died after being taken to hospital. One other person was wounded and was being treated at a local hospital, Mullen said.

None of the victims were immediately identified. But the Reverend Al Sharpton, the New York-based civil rights leader, said in a tweet that the Reverend Clementa Pinckney, the church's pastor and a member of the state Senate, was among the dead.

After the shooting, a bomb threat was reported near the church, Charleston County Sheriff's Office spokesman Eric Watson said, and people who were gathered in the area were told by police to move back.

Mullen said that the all-clear had been given after checks following the bomb threat.

A police chaplain was present at the scene of the shooting, and a helicopter with a searchlight hovered overhead as officers combed the area.

Following the attack on the church, Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush, the former governor of Florida, canceled an appearance in Charleston that had been scheduled for Thursday morning.

"Governor Bush's thoughts and prayers are with the individuals and families affected by this tragedy," his campaign team said in a statement.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com