US man charged for wearing Halloween mask

A man faces charges of wearing a mask or hood in public after police arrested him on Halloween night and charged him under a rarely used old law designed to combat the Ku Klux Klan.

The News & Observer of Raleigh reports that 20-year-old Lawrence Marqueal Rogers was cited for wearing a red bandana that police said concealed everything but his eyes.

He was then arrested when he donned the garment again. The man was being held in jail on a 7,500 US dollar bond.

The University of North Carolina School of Law said the 1953 ban on people 16 or older wearing masks or hoods was adopted to curtail the activities of the Ku Klux Klan, the secretive white supremacist group whose members wore distinctive pointed hoods to conceal their identities.

At least 17 other states have similar laws.