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FBI Arrests Friend of Accused Charleston Shooter, Dylann Roof

Authorities believe Joseph Meek may have known in advance about Roof's plans to commit a racist massacre in Charleston, but did not notify law enforcement.
Photo via APTN/AP

A friend of the accused gunman in the June massacre that killed nine black churchgoers in South Carolina pleaded not guilty on Friday to lying to investigators and concealing his knowledge of the attack before the fact.

Joseph Meek Jr. had given the gunman, 21-year-old Dylann Roof, a place to stay in the weeks before the killings at a historic church in Charleston, according to reports. He was picked up by authorities at his job near Columbia, South Carolina, just before 4pm, the the New York Daily News reported.

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Police believed Meek may have known in advance about the shooting at the Mother Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church. Several days after the massacre, Meek told the Daily News he had taken Roof's gun away from him temporarily after he started a racist rant about starting a race war and killing people, but later returned it to him — a move Meek said he later regretted after learning of the shooting.

"He said he was planning for about six months to do something crazy," Meek told the paper at the time. "He wanted it to be segregated. He wanted it to be white with the white, black with the black. All the races segregated. He wanted to do something big."

The Post and Courier in Charleston, citing unnamed officials, reported that Meek was set to be arraigned Friday morning in federal court on a charge of misprision — the deliberate concealment of one's knowledge — of a felony.

Related: 'It's the Right Thing to Do': South Carolina Senate Votes to Remove Confederate Flag From Capitol

An act constitutes misprision if the suspect knows about "the actual commission of a felony" but "conceals and does not as soon as possible" inform authorities.

The paper reported that Meek denied committing any crimes Thursday.

Meanwhile, Roof faces 33 federal hate crime and firearms charges, along with state murder charges.

The federal charges are based on evidence that Roof targeted the black victims because of their race and "in order to interfere with their exercise of religion," according to US Attorney General Loretta Lynch.

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An attorney for Roof announced this week that his client would be willing to plead guilty to murder charges if it would spare him from execution.

Bill McGuire, the chief death penalty attorney for the South Carolina Commission on Indigent Defense who is serving as one of Roof's lawyers, declared on Wednesday that Roof would plead guilty in exchange for a sentence of life in prison without parole. He suggested that this would also serve to spare the victims' families and survivors of the shooting from having to endure a lengthy trial.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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