Ahmaud Arbery was killed on February 23, 2020, in Brunswick, Georgia. The three white Americans found guilty had already been sentenced
© Provided by franceinfo
Three white Americans, sentenced for chasing and killing young black jogger Ahmaud Arbery two years agowere also found guilty on Tuesday 22 February of “racist crime” by a federal jury, in a case that had become a symbol during the major anti-racist demonstrations of the summer of 2020 in the United States.
Travis McMichael, 36, his father Gregory McMichael, 66, and their neighbor William Bryan, 52, had previously been convicted of murdering Ahmaud Arbery and sentenced to life in prison by a Georgia state court. . But this first trial had only scratched the surface of the racist dimension of the drama, unlike this second federal trial which put this question at the center of the debates.
Video: Shooting in Gap: sentenced to 6 years in prison, the defendant appeals (BFMTV)
Click here to enlarge
NEXT VIDEO
Shortly after the verdict was announced, Ahmaud Arbery’s family walked out of court with their hands raised in the air in victory. “We got justice for Ahmaud”his father, Marcus Arbery, told the press from Brunswick, a coastal town in Georgia. “It has been a long and trying battle”added the mother of Ahmaud Arbery, Wanda Cooper-Jones. “We got a win today, but there are so many families that didn’t.”she pointed out.
During the trial, the prosecution notably listed the particularly violent racist insults uttered by the three men in the past, with the aim of accounting for the state of mind of the defendants when they embarked on the pursuit of Ahmaud Arbery. According to the prosecutor, the son McMichael had, for example, called African Americans “criminals”from “monkeys”, “of savages and sub-humans”.