Dylann Roof, the suspect in last week’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 Web site on Saturday.
Reporters could not immediately confirm who created the Web site or the authenticity of the photographs posted on it.
Photo: AFP handout/lastrhodesian.com
Investigators were aware of the postings and taking steps to verify their authenticity, the FBI said in a statement.
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, 21, was arrested on Thursday and charged with the murders of nine people 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 [the] 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 Web site surfaced as mourners arrived in Charleston from around the US 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 killings were shattering to a city steeped in history. Charleston was an important port city during the American Civil War in the 1860s, pitting the breakaway Confederate states against the Union Army under the control of the US 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.
Activists on Saturday called for the removal of the Confederate battle flag from the grounds of the South Carolina state house because of what some people see as its racist associations.
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