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Victims 'and survivors' attorneys before the Department of Justice in Washington
Photo: Cliff Owen / AP
More than six years after a racially motivated massacre in a church in Charleston, South Carolina, which left nine dead, relatives and victims reached a multi-million dollar settlement with the Justice Department.
For those killed in the bloodbath, the compensation amounts to 6 to 7.5 million US dollars (around 5.1 to 6.4 million euros) per plaintiff, as the Justice Department announced on Thursday.
The survivors agreed to $ 5 million per plaintiff.
Overall, claims from 14 plaintiffs would be settled with the settlement, it said.
According to media reports, a total of 88 million US dollars was agreed.
Dylann Roof, 22, who described himself as a racist, shot and killed nine African Americans during a Bible study in a Methodist church in Charleston, South Carolina, in June 2015.
Roof had fired at his victims more than 70 times at the time.
He was sentenced to death two years later.
The act was a horrific hate crime that caused immeasurable suffering for the victims' families and survivors, said Justice Secretary Merrick Garland.
The background to the civil legal dispute is that the shooter could buy the murder weapon, although he should actually have been refused.
The victims' representatives had accused the judicial authorities that the FBI had not noticed in time during the routine background check for the legal purchase of the murder weapon that the perpetrator was not allowed to own weapons.
Accordingly, the perpetrator should have appeared in the relevant database as blocked because of a previous drug offense.
The plaintiffs blamed the failure of the authorities - essential information about Roof, for example, was not correctly recorded and passed on.
Since that tragic crime, the FBI has been working to strengthen and improve the background check process, the Justice Department said.
kfr / dpa / AFP
