Columbia, United States--Large crowds are expected at Sunday's service at the black church in Charleston where nine African Americans were gunned down, as a chilling website apparently created by the suspected white supremacist shooter emerged.
The service will be the first since the bloodbath on Wednesday at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in the southern state of South Carolina, which has fuelled simmering racial tensions in the United States and reignited impassioned calls for stronger gun-control laws.
The historic church reopened Saturday after police said it was no longer considered a crime scene, with some members visiting the room where fellow worshippers were shot dead, according to the local Post and Courier newspaper.
Meanwhile, a website allegedly created by the accused shooter, Dylann Roof, surfaced, in which the suspect rails against African Americans and appears in photographs with guns and burning the US flag.
A rambling 2,500-word manifesto on the website, laced with racist lingo and spelling errors, does not bear the 21-year-old suspected supremacist's name.
But its first-person style, its title -- "Last Rhodesian" -- and references to Charleston and apartheid South Africa suggested he was its author.
Roof, who went on the run after the shooting, was caught a day later in neighboring North Carolina and is in solitary confinement in jail charged with nine counts of murder.
The FBI said it was "taking steps to verify the authenticity" of the website.
AFP
