A US jury convicted a member of white supremacist group the Ku Klux Klan of kidnapping and conspiracy on Thursday over the 1964 deaths of two black teenagers in south-west Mississippi.

James Ford Seale, 71, faces life in prison in the deaths of Charles Eddie Moore and Henry Hezekiah Dee.

The 19-year-olds disappeared on May 2 1964 and their bodies were found later in the Mississippi river.

Jurors deliberated for just two hours before convicting Mr Seale, who sat stone-faced as the verdict was read.

He is to be sentenced on August 24 on two counts of kidnapping and one count of conspiracy.

The prosecution's team star witness was confessed Ku Klux Klan member Charles Marcus Edwards.

During closing arguments, prosecutors acknowledged that they had made "a deal with the devil," but they said that offering immunity to Mr Edwards to secure his testimony against Mr Seale had been the only way to obtain justice.

Mr Edwards testified that he and Mr Seale had both belonged to a Klan chapter that was led by Mr Seale's father. Mr Seale denies membership of the Klan.

In further testimony, Mr Edwards said that Mr Dee and Mr Moore had been stuffed, alive, into the boot of Mr Seale's car and driven to a farm.

They were later tied up and driven across the Mississippi river into Louisiana, Mr Edwards said, and Mr Seale told him that Mr Dee and Mr Moore had been attached to heavy weights and dumped alive into the river.

In closing arguments, federal public defender Kathy Nester asserted that Mr Seale should be acquitted because "this case all comes down to the word of one man, an admitted liar, a man out to save his own skin."

Federal prosecutor Paige Fitzgerald hit back by quoting the testimony of a retired FBI agent, who told the court that he had heard Mr Seale say: "'Yes. But I'm not going to admit it. You're going to have to prove it," after being arrested on a state murder charge in 1964. That charge was later dropped.

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