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Elderly Klan member goes on trial for double murder

US Marshal Supervisor James McIntosh, left, and US Marshal Nehemiah Flowers, right, escort reputed Ku Klux Klansman James Ford Seale from the federal courthouse in Jackson, Mississippi, on Wednesday. PHOTO: AP

A former member of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) went on trial on Wednesday charged in connection with the brutal murders more than 40 years ago of two young black civil rights activists in Mississippi.

The trial, in a federal court in Jackson, Mississippi, is one of several cases of racist murder from the 1960s that have been reopened in recent years.

The defendant, former policeman James Seale, 71, was in the courtroom as jury selection began early on Wednesday, according to media reports in the southern state.

Seale has been charged with the May 1964 kidnapping of civil rights activists Henry Dee and Charles Moore, both 19 at the time.

The indictment claims Seale and others beat the teenagers to make them confess to weapons smuggling, then lashed them to an engine and a piece of rail and threw them into the Mississippi river.

The bodies were discovered months later during a search for three other civil rights activists who had disappeared in the area and whose story was later depicted in the Mississippi Burning movie.

Seale was arrested in 1964 but was released as police said they did not have sufficient evidence to prosecute him.

The court is expected to hear comments Seale made in an FBI car following his arrest at the time, and which were recounted at a pre-trial hearing by a former FBI agent.

"We know you did it, you know you did it, the Lord above knows you did it," agent Lenard Wolf told Seale.

According to the testimony, Seale answered: "Yes, but I'm not going to admit it; you are going to have to prove it."

An alleged accomplice, Charles Edwards, is expected to testify against Seale.

Edwards, who was also a member of the white supremacist KKK, reportedly admitted in 1964 that he and Seale kidnapped and beat the two teenagers, but denied being involved in their deaths.

The case was reopened in 2005 following years of lobbying by the brother of one of the victims.

Seale had been believed dead for years until Thomas Moore, 63, tracked him down in southern Mississippi while investigating his brother's murder.
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