The U.S. Justice Department announced Wednesday that a federal grand jury returned a 33-count indictment against Dylann Roof that included hate crime charges for his massacre of nine black churchgoers last month in Charleston, South Carolina.
Attorney General Loretta Lynch said in announcing the charges that Roof, a 21-year-old white man, targeted Charleston’s historically black Emanuel AME Church “to ensure the greatest notoriety and attention to his actions.”
Asked whether the Justice Department considered prosecuting Roof for domestic terrorism, Lynch responded that there are no applicable laws. She later added that Roof’s crime should not be considered any less serious because it hasn’t been officially labelled as domestic terrorism.
“Racially motivated violence such as this is the original domestic terrorism,” she said.
South Carolina is one of just five states that does not have a hate-crime law on the books. Roof already faces nine counts of murder and three counts of attempted murder for the victims who survived the shooting at Charleston’s Emanuel AME Church.
Lynch said the Justice Department had yet to decide whether to pursue the death penalty in Roof’s case.
Read the indictment below:
This post has been updated.
