FBI 'used Mafia enforcer' to find bodies in Mississippi Burning case

A former Ku Klux Klan member convicted in the killings of three Mississippi civil rights workers in the 1960s must be freed because the FBI used a Mafia enforcer to torture a key witness for information, his lawyers say.

Edgar Ray Killen, 84, was convicted in 2005 of ordering the Klan killings of the trio 41 years earlier, a crime that was dramatised in the film Mississippi Burning.His lawyers have appealed against his life sentence for triple manslaughter, citing new evidence that the FBI used Gregory Scarpa - known as The Grim Reaper - to put pressure on Klan members to reveal where the bodies had been hidden.

The lawyers also say that his conviction was tainted by the fact that a defence lawyer in a previous trial over the killings in 1967 was an FBI informant who had been providing prosecutors with information about the defence case.

The court transcript from 1967 - in which Killen was acquitted on civil rights charges - was allowed to be used in the later trial because many of the witnesses had since died.

Rob Ratliff, Killen's lawyer, said the evidence included crucial information from a Klan member who revealed where the bodies had been buried.

It was now clear that the informant had been kidnapped by Scarpa and an FBI helper, and subjected to "typical Mafia-type behaviour", he said.

The "behaviour" may have included a severe beating but certainly included death threats to his family and having a gun barrel inserted into his mouth, he added.

Killen's lawyers argue that his rights to a full and fair trial, and the right to confront witnesses against him, have been violated.

If the 1967 trial had known that the location of the bodies had been discovered unlawfully, it would not have been allowed as evidence, said Mr Ratliff.

The FBI has always declined to comment on whether Scarpa was involved in the case. Scarpa was a senior member of the Colombo crime family and an FBI informant for three decades.

Killen's lawyers officially requested on Thursday that the FBI hand over its files relating to Scarpa and to the defence lawyer, who was named as Clayton Lewis. Lewis, the former mayor of Philadelphia, is also now dead.

"If it's OK to torture witnesses to get a conviction against Killen, then it's OK to torture witnesses to get a conviction against anybody," said Mr Ratliff.

Scarpa's involvement in the investigation had long been rumoured but was confirmed last year by a New York judge who had seen his FBI file while trying an unrelated murder case involving the mobster's former FBI handler.

The judge said: "That a thug like Scarpa would be employed by the federal government to beat witnesses and threaten them at gunpoint to obtain information regarding the deaths of civil rights workers in the south in the early 1960s is a shocking demonstration of the government's unacceptable willingness to employ criminality to fight crime." continues here

Gregory Scarpa, now there’s a good Anglo-Saxon sounding name, of cause I’m not surprised, given that organised crime is predominantly an alien enterprise (regardless of what television portrays) it doesn’t surprise me that the Us government made use of thugs such as Scarpa, this a government that uses the practice of Extraordinary rendition or more correctly torture by proxy. Officially of course, the US government deny the torture claims (they would) and refer to it merely as extrajudicial transfer, yet the very practice of Extraordinary rendition, means that suspects can be taken to, less, shall we say, progressive regimes, regimes where “human rights” are unheard of. Many, especially nationalists will not bat an eye, as most of the high profile cases involve purported Islamic terrorists however, both the US government and the European Union are not adverse to kidnap and false trial, as evidenced by the recent and ongoing Radovan Karadžić case, for who would volunteer to languish in the gaol, that is the UN war crimes tribunal's detention centre. As the ill-fated Slobodan Milošević did after his “arrest” on 31 March 2001, only to die mysteriously, found dead on 11 March 2006, Radovan Karadžić must be living, a now quite hellish existence.

Both of these men stood for their people, they dared to oppose malevolent forces that threatened their people, its culture and existence, there is no doubt in my mind that nationalism as well as Islam has been targeted for destruction, nationalism because it threatens the new world order in the west and Islam for same in the east. Of course our own country the UK is lovely they wouldn’t dream of killing, harassing or denying a platform to political opponents after all they looked after Rudolph Hess (or prisoner number 7, as he could never be referred to by name) so well. Apparently this weak 93 year old man managed to take his own life, while under the supervision of a prison guard, a tremendous feat given the weakened state of the man. Wolf Rüdiger Hess, Rudolph Hess’s son sums up his feelings on the matter thus, “Rudolf Hess did not commit suicide on August 17, 1987, as the British government claims. The weight of evidence shows instead that British officials, acting on high-level orders, murdered my father.

There are many cases of suspicious death, relating to “patriotic” or “nationalist” prisoners and we would be fools indeed, to believe that the forces arrayed against us adhere to any convention whether formal or informal. We must remember at all times that the treacherous elite will use any and all methods, to thwart their opposition from whichever direction that it comes. To this end the political route is useless, given that no nationalist party will be permitted to obtain power, the body politic of this country is rotten to the core and one must play within the system or oppose it there is simply no other choice. Nationalism must, because of the immensity of the threat become, ironically a global force, sacrificing territorial patriotism for the greater good we cannot even hope to withstand the storm, unless we appreciate its vast scope and tremendous strength.

In many of the cases I cite here, such as the Edgar Ray Killen case, the Radovan Karadžić and Slobodan Milošević cases, all purportedly involve murder and/or genocide and acts such as these can never be condoned however, in the case of Radovan Karadžić and Slobodan Milošević, I must ask, what is war if not killing, is there never a time, when in defence of position, territory or people war must occur, or is it always bad. Is field engagement on the ground genocide, whilst aerial bombing from on high permissible and therefore a non-crime. Or is the real crime, the motivation of the nations, individuals or organisations involved, you see in their war against terror, they can kill and maim with abandon, they can doctor evidence and lie to their people. They can introduce laws curtailing freedom and crackdown on dissent, whilst we, we masses of peoples under their heel, we grabbed by the hair of our heads into line, must live in their sham egalitarian prison, watching as freedom dies and the new world order grows. So I understand the fear, the anxiety, better to acquiesce than stand, better to watch evil than become its victim, better to turn away feigning ignorance, better to take the silver than not, better to live than die. 14

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