Ex-KKK man jailed for life in US

A US court has sentenced a 72-year-old former member of the Ku Klux Klan, a white supremacist group, to three life prison terms for his role in the 1964 killings of two black men.

James Seale was sentenced on Friday in Jackson, Mississippi after being convicted in June of kidnapping and conspiracy in the killings of Henry Dee and Charles Moore.

"This case is an outstanding example of our ongoing, vigilant efforts to prosecute racially-motivated crimes to the fullest extent of the law, regardless of how many years have passed," Alberto Gonzalez, US attorney general, said. Seale's lawyer said he will appeal against the convictions.

A former police officer, Seale was arrested in 1964 but was released after police said they lacked sufficient evidence to prosecute him. Seale was believed dead for years until Thomas Moore, brother of Charles Moore, located him in southern Mississippi while investigating his brother's murder.

Men drowned

Dee and Moore, both 19, were kidnapped in 1964 while hitch-hiking in Mississippi and taken to a forest, where Seale aimed a shotgun towards the men while his companions attacked them. The teenagers were driven to a tributary of the Mississippi river, attached to heavy weights and thrown alive into the water from a boat, prosecutors said. Their bodies were recovered during a search for three other civil rights activists later that year.

Mississippi lies at the heart of the so-called "deep South" that was long associated with hangings and other violent attacks on blacks by the KKK and other white supremacist groups.

The main prosecution witness in the case against Seale was Charles Marcus Edward, another former Klansman who was involved in the attack on Dee and Moore. Edward, who was granted immunity from prosecution in exchange for his testimony, told the court that Seale admitted he killed the men.

Lenard Wolf, a former agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) said during the trial that Seale was unmoved by the investigators' belief that he was involved in the killings.

"We know you did it, you know you did it, the Lord above knows you did it," Wolf told Seale, according to the testimony. "Yes, but I'm not going to admit it; you are going to have to prove it," Seale answered.

Violent campaign

While Seale was not charged with murder, the indictment claimed the abductions resulted in the deaths of Dee and Moore.

"While this sentence can never repair the suffering and loss brought by these heinous acts of racial violence, it will hopefully bring some closure to the families of Henry Dee and Charlie Moore who have waited decades for justice," said Wan Kim, US assistant attorney general for the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice.

A string of federal prosecutions across the US has attempted to address crimes during the 1950s and 1960s by white supremacists. The KKK waged a violent campaign against the black community and against the struggle for civil rights for African-Americans in the southern US, where racial segregation was in place. In many cases, such groups were supported by local law enforcement and judicial authorities, while black Americans had few legal protections.

Aljazeera

Ex-KKK man guilty of 1964 murder of black teenagers

A US marshal escorts James Ford Seale, 71, from the federal
courthouse in Jackson, Mississippi earlier in the trial.

A 71-year-old man alleged to have been a member of the Ku Klux Klan has been found guilty of kidnapping and conspiracy in the 1964 deaths of two black teenagers that sparked a summer of violence later depicted in the film Mississippi Burning.

James Ford Seale had pleaded not guilty to the charges relating to the deaths of Charles Moore and Henry Dee, both aged 19 at the time of their disappearance on May 2 1964. Their bodies were later found in the Mississippi river.

Seale's conviction was achieved on the words of a confessed Klansman, Charles Edwards, who was granted immunity from prosecution in exchange for turning on his old friend.

He testified that Seale had belonged to the same Klan chapter, or klavern, as he had, which was led by Seale's late father. The prosecution team admitted to the jury they had made "a deal with the devil" but argued that it was the only way to get justice 43 years after the killings.

Seale, who declined to testify, now faces up to two life sentences. He is unlikely to leave prison alive.

As the guilty verdicts were returned, the victims' relatives hugged each other and cried.

Seale's prosecution may mark one of, if not the last trial of its kind from the brutal heyday of the KKK and its violent clashes with the civil rights movement. As witnesses pass away, the likelihood of further trials diminishes.

During the trial, the jury heard that white supremacists, often with the complicity of local police officers and the courts, were consciously targeting civil rights activists in an attempt to terrorise them into silence. Seale was arrested a few months after the men disappeared, but murder charges were later dropped against him.

Prosecutors alleged that the two victims had been picked up while they were hitchhiking, thrown into the boot of a car and taken to a forest where they were beaten in an attempt to extract information on firearms being brought into the area.

Edwards said that he saw Seale hold a gun to Dee and Moore, while the two young black men were beaten for about half an hour, 30 or 40 times each. Edwards claimed that although he had been involved in the beating, he had not been present when the men had been thrown into the river.

He said Seale later told him how the men were dumped alive in a backwater of the Mississippi river with weights attached to them.

Defence lawyers that the case was flimsy because it relied on the evidence of one man, an "admitted liar". "This case all comes down to the word of one man, an admitted liar, a man out to save his own skin. A case based on his word is no case at all," the lead defence lawyer, Kathy Nester, said.

Seale has always denied membership of the KKK.

Before the trial started, a former FBI agent gave evidence that he had confronted Seale and accused him of the murder a few months after the deaths. Edward Putz said Seale had replied: "Yes, but I'm not going to admit it. You are going to have to prove it."

Guardian