CHURCH KILLER IS ADMIRER OF APARTHEID REGIME

A WHITE man dressed in a jacket emblazoned with the old apartheid-era South African flag has been arrested by US police on suspicion of killing nine people at a prayer meeting in one of the nation ’ s oldest black churches in Charleston, South Carolina.

Authorities are investigating the brutal attack as a hate crime.

The shooting at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in the southeastern US city was one of the worst attacks on a place of worship in the country in recent years, and comes at a time of lingering racial tensions.

The suspect – identified as Dylann Roof of Columbia, South Carolina – was taken into custody in neighboring North Carolina, about a four-hour drive from the scene of the shooting, Charleston police chief Gregory Mullen said.

“I do believe it was a hate crime,” Mullen said.

Detectives were headed to Shelby, North Carolina – where Roof, 21, was apprehended during a traffic stop – to interview the suspect and gather evidence, he told reporters.

Churchgoers had gathered on Wednesday evening when the shooter walked into the building, sat in the congregation for about an hour and then opened fire, Mullen said.

Three men and six women were killed, and several other people were wounded. Among the dead was the church ’ s pastor Clementa Pinckney, who was also a Democratic state senator.

Roof – a slender white man with dark blond or brown hair in a distinctive bowl-type haircut and wearing a grey sweater – had been described by police as “extremely dangerous.”

A picture on Roof ’ s Facebook page showed him wearing a black jacket with patches of the apartheid-era South African flag and the flag of white-ruled Rhodesia, which is now Zimbabwe. –