Ex-Klansman gets life for Mississippi killings

JACKSON, Miss, Aug 24 (Reuters) A former Ku Klux Klansman was sentenced to three life terms today for his role in the 1964 killings of two black men in a case that highlights white supremacist violence during the civil rights era.

James Seale, who was shackled and wore an orange prison jump suit, remained impassive as the sentence was read out, witnesses said.

Seale maintains his innocence and will appeal, his attorney Kathy Nester said.

Seale was convicted in June of kidnapping and conspiracy in the killings of Henry Hezekiah Dee and Charles Eddie Moore, both 19, who were kidnapped while hitchhiking in Mississippi.

They were taken to a national forest and Seale trained a shotgun on the teenagers while his companions beat them.

Dee and Moore were stuffed into the trunk of a car, driven to a tributary of the Mississippi River, attached to heavy weights and thrown alive into the water from a boat, prosecutors said.

The bodies of Dee and Moore were only recovered during a high-profile search for three civil rights activists later that year whose deaths generated widespread revulsion at the racial violence in Mississippi.

The main prosecution witness in the case against Seale, another former Klansman who was granted immunity, testified during the trial that Seale told him he had killed Dee and Moore. Seale was not charged with murder.

The trial was the latest brought by federal prosecutors in an attempt to clear up crimes during the 1950s and 1960s by white supremacists who aimed to terrify the black community into not supporting a campaign for civil and voting rights for African-Americans in the racially segregated South.

In many cases, the Ku Klux Klan and other groups were able to operate with impunity because they were supported by local law enforcement and judicial authorities.

By the same token, black Americans had few legal protections and crimes against them often attracted little publicity.

In 2005, a Mississippi jury convicted Klansman Edgar Ray Killen of three counts of manslaughter in the murders of the three civil rights activists, which formed the basis of the 1988 film ''Mississippi Burning.'' REUTERS AK BST0029