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Fifteen people have been indicted on gang charges after passing the home of an African-American family in suburban Atlanta, Georgia this summer in a caravan of cars that prominently displayed Confederate flags, reports The New York Times.

Prosecutors in Douglasville, Georgia on Friday won indictments against 15 supporters of the Confederate flag, accusing them of making terroristic threats and violating the state’s anti-street-gang statute in July during a confrontation with Black partygoers, who were celebrating a child’s birthday, the report says.

From The New York Times:

Prosecutors say that members of the group, which calls itself Respect the Flag, threatened a group of blacks attending an outdoor birthday party on July 25. A cellphone video of part of the episode shows several white men driving away from the party in a convoy of pickup trucks with the Confederate battle flag and other banners, including American flags, fluttering from the truck beds.

The partygoers contend that members of the flag group yelled racial slurs and displayed a crowbar, a knife and either a rifle or a shotgun, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a civil rights group in Montgomery, Ala., that is representing some of the accusers.

The Douglas County district attorney, Brian Fortner, a white Republican elected to the office in 2014, announced the indictments in a news conference Monday morning. Each of the 15 was indicted on one count of making terroristic threats and a second count of unlawfully participating in “criminal gang activity.”

Although the case still has to go to trial, Morris Dees, founder of the SPLC, applauded the decision, saying he “could not recall seeing an anti-gang statute used against this kind of group in the past.”

The report says some of the men have been arrested, and that others would be arrested soon. In an interview with The Times, one of the men denied breaking the law and accused partygoers of throwing rocks at their vehicles.

SOURCE: The New York Times | PHOTO CREDIT: Getty

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