Charleston Shooting Suspect Dylann Roof Wore Pro-Apartheid, Rhodesia Patches On Jacket

Charleston Shooting Suspect Wore Pro-Apartheid Patch On Jacket

Judging from the patches affixed to the jacket he's wearing in his Facebook profile picture, suspected Charleston church shooter Dylann Storm Roof may have had racial motives for the crime.

In the photo, Roof stares directly at the camera, clad in a black jacket with two flags affixed above his right breast:dylann roof facebook photo

The flag on top is an apartheid-era South African flag dating back to 1928, which the country replaced in 1994 after the end of apartheid. According to the Anti-Defamation League, the flag has been used as a symbol of white supremacy since then, both in the United States and elsewhere in the world:

The second flag was used to represent the unrecognized state of Rhodesia from 1968 through 1979, after the former British colony of South Rhodesia fractured and a white minority attempted to take control of the country. An ensuing civil war ended in 1979, the BBC reports, only after a peace agreement led to a new constitution which guaranteed minority rights.

Another photo shared on Facebook Thursday purports to show Roof, 21, sitting on the hood of his car with his legs straddling a license plate for the "Confederate States of America."

These are the only other pics he has on his Facebook

Posted by Raymond Tyrel Carter on Thursday, June 18, 2015

Kimberly Kozny, the mother of one of Roof's childhood friends, told the Associated Press that Roof had a Confederate flag license plate on his car. Authorities said Roof's vehicle had a "very distinctive front license plate," but did not elaborate further.

Roof was arrested Thursday in Shelby, North Carolina.

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