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Ex-KKK man freed over 1964 deaths

A US appeals court has overturned the conviction of a former Ku Klux Klansman jailed last year over the deaths of two black teenagers in Mississippi in 1964.

James Ford Seale, 72, was serving three life terms on charges of kidnapping and conspiracy over the deaths.

The court agreed with arguments by Mr Seale's lawyer that a legal time limit for prosecuting the case had lapsed.

Dozens of black people were killed in the 1950s and 1960s by white people wanting to preserve racial segregation.

Former policeman Mr Seale's case is one of many recently revived by US prosecutors hoping to punish unsolved crimes from the era of the civil rights movement.

Charles Eddie Moore and Henry Hezekiah Dee were both aged 19 when they were killed.

They were said to have been kidnapped and forced into a vehicle owned by Mr Seale before being tied up and drowned in the Mississippi river.

Their bodies were found months later during a search for three well-known civil rights activists - Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney - who had disappeared in the area.

The investigation into the campaigners' disappearance was dramatised in the 1988 Hollywood film, Mississippi Burning.
Read entire article at BBC