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.
PHOTO: AP
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.
PHISHING: The con might appear convincing, as the scam e-mails can coincide with genuine messages from Apple saying you have run out of storage For a while you have been getting messages from Apple saying “your iCloud storage is full.” They say you have exceeded your storage plan, so documents are no longer being backed up, and photos you take are not being uploaded. You have been resisting Apple’s efforts to get you to pay a minimum of ￡0.99 (US$1.33) a month for more storage, but it seems that you cannot keep putting off the inevitable: You have received an e-mail which says your iCloud account has been blocked, and your photos and videos would be deleted very soon. To keep them you need
The Israeli military has demolished entire villages as part of its invasion of south Lebanon, rigging homes with explosives and razing them to the ground in massive remote detonations. The Guardian reviewed three videos posted by the Israeli military and on social media, which showed Israel carrying out mass detonations in the villages of Taybeh, Naqoura and Deir Seryan along the Israel-Lebanon border. Lebanese media has reported more mass detonations in other border villages, but satellite imagery was not readily available to verify these claims. The demolitions came after Israeli Minister of Defense Israel Katz called for the destruction of
A US YouTuber who caused outrage for filming himself kissing a statue commemorating Korean wartime sex slaves has been sentenced to six months in prison, a court in Seoul said yesterday. Johnny Somali, 25, gained notoriety several years ago for recording himself doing a series of provocative stunts in South Korea and Japan, and streaming them on platforms such as YouTube and Twitch. South Korean authorities indicted Somali — whose real name is Ramsey Khalid Ismael — in 2024 on public order violations and obstruction of business, and banned him from leaving the country. “The court has sentenced him to six months in
The death toll from a shooting in western Afghanistan rose to 11 on Saturday, after gunmen targeted civilians at a picnic spot in Herat, the provincial authority said. Bullet marks were visible on a wall of the Sayed Mohammad Agha Shia shrine, while bloodstains marked a blanket abandoned at the scene. “Eleven people have been recorded dead and eight others wounded from Friday’s incident, with the condition of two of the wounded reported as critical,” Herat’s information office said in a statement. The update raises a toll of seven killed provided on Friday by the Afghan Ministry of Interior Affairs
RSS