Witness 'killed for US jail gang'

Security around the Californian courthouse is tight

The first witness in the trial of four alleged members of a racist prison gang in the US has told how he killed as part of his initiation to the gang.

The white supremacist group, the Aryan Brotherhood, is said to have controlled a network of US jails for decades.

Witness Clifford Smith told the court the gang used violence to keep power.

Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty for two of the suspects, Barry Mills, 57, and Tyler Davis Bingham, 58. All four deny charges of murder.

The trial in Santa Ana, California, is the first in a series aimed at breaking the Aryan Brotherhood's influence.

Formed in 1967 in California's San Quentin prison, the gang is accused of running drug trafficking rings through a network of jails and accepting murder contracts from organisations like the mafia.

'No way out'

Smith, a convicted murderer and the first witness to take the stand, testified that he was a member of the gang from 1978 to 1984.

He told the court that the group killed in order to keep the power needed to run criminal activities including drugs, extortion and fraud.

His initiation involved helping to kill one enemy of the gang and stabbing another. Once a member, he said, "the only way out is if one of them kills you".

This case is fundamentally about power and control of the nation's prisons Assistant US Attorney Michael Emmick

Smith also described how gang members would communicate using a system of "runners", usually female friends, to carry coded messages and smuggle in drugs or small knives.

Security is tight at the trial, with a metal detector outside the courtroom door and the accused chained to their chairs, the BBC's Duncan Kennedy in Los Angeles says.

The men, nearly all in their fifties, go by names such as The Baron and The Hulk.

"This case is fundamentally about power and control of the nation's prisons," Assistant US Attorney Michael Emmick told the court.

He said the Brotherhood was not the biggest prison gang but it was particularly violent, disciplined and fearless.

Defence lawyers said the gang was not a racist organisation and was formed only to protect its members.

Four years ago federal agents arrested more than 40 members.

Nineteen have already pleaded guilty but up to 16 are facing the death penalty in a series of trials, making it one of the biggest capital punishment cases in US history.

This first trial is expected to last at least seven months.