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1st LD Writethru: Racist manifesto purportedly linked to Charleston massacre suspect surfaces online

Xinhua, June 21, 2015 Adjust font size:

A website surfaced Saturday with a racist manifesto purportedly written by the white gunman Dylann Roof, explaining why he allegedly targeted Charleston, South Carolina, in Wednesday's massacre that killed nine African- American churchgoers.

"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," read part of the manifesto posted on the website, which also contained a number of photographs which appear to show Roof, the suspect in Wednesday's Charleston African-American church carnage, holding a Confederate flag and burning a U.S. flag.

"Well someone has to have the bravery to take it to the real world, and I guess that has to be me," the 2,444-word manifesto concluded.

The creator of the website or the authenticity of the photos could not be confirmed immediately and U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation said it was investigating who was the author of the manifesto.

However, according to the U.S. TV network NBC News, the website was registered under the name Dylann Roof, using Roof's mother's home address.

Employing defamatory words, the manifesto is broken up into several sections outlining the writer's feelings about different races. A large proportion of the text deals with the Afro-American communities in the United States and details a racist ideology of white supremacy on topics such as segregation and slavery.

Calling African-Americans "subconsciously viewed" by the whites as "lower beings," the manifesto once praise segregation as a " defensive measure" against the African-Americans.

"Not only did it protect us from having to interact with them, and from being physically harmed by them, but it protected us from being brought down to their level," said the manifesto.

Roof, a 21-year-old white man, was detained Thursday and charged with nine counts of murder for the mass shooting at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church Wednesday night.

Authorities said Roof spent nearly an hour in Bible study with other 12 black parishioners at the renowned African-American church before opening fires at them. Endite