A website apparently created by Dylann Roof emerged Saturday in which the accused Charleston church shooter rails against African Americans and appears in photographs with guns and burning the US flag.
It came to light as a mournful vigil Friday for nine black worshippers killed at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church gave way to anger and scheduled protests in Charleston and the state capital Columbia.
The church reopened, meanwhile, three days after the bloodbath.
A rambling 2,500-word manifesto on the website, laced with racist lingo and spelling errors, does not bear the 21-year-old’s name.
But its first-person style, its title — “Last Rhodesian” — and references to Charleston and apartheid South Africa suggested he was its author.
There was no immediate comment from local or federal police investigators as to its authenticity.
“I have no choice. I am not in the position to, alone, go into the ghetto and fight,” the manifesto stated.
“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.
– ‘Guess it has to be me’ –
“We have no skinheads, no real KKK, no one doing anything but talking on the Internet. Well someone has to have the bravery to take it to the real world, and I guess that has to be me.”
Downloadable files on the website contain several photos of Roof, who hails from a small village outside Columbia, more than two hours by car from Charleston.
In one, he is seen in a garden, holding a Confederate flag and handgun, wearing aviator-style sunglasses and oddly surrounded by potted flowers.
Two others depict Roof in a bedroom — one with a Confederate flag, the other pointing a handgun at the camera.
Roof was arrested over the state line in North Carolina the day after Wednesday’s terror during an evening Bible study at the Emanuel church, one of the nation’s most historic African American places of worship.
Some photos show him wearing garments with the flags of Rhodesia, as Zimbabwe was called under white rule, and apartheid-era South Africa. (AFP)
