Seventy-four days passed between the murder of Ahmaud Arbery, a black jogger, and the arrests of his two murderers. A delay that prompted the Minister of Justice of Georgia to request, Sunday, May 10, a federal inquiry into the manner in which the inquiry was treated in this southern state of the United States.
On February 23, Ahmaud Arbery, 25, was killed while jogging in a residential area in Brunswick, a city in Georgia. State police announced on Thursday that two white men, suspected of having killed him while he was unarmed, had been arrested and charged with murder.
The death of this black jogger created a strong emotion in the United States. The 74-day period between the murder and the arrests raised particular questions.
"Family, community and the state of Georgia deserve answers"
"I have formally requested the Justice Department to investigate the handling of this case," Georgian Justice Minister Chris Carr tweeted, linking his tweet to the official statement sent to the Washington Department of Justice.
I will be looking into how the #AhmaudArbery case was handled from the outset.
The family, the community and the state of Georgia deserve answers. We need to know exactly what happened, and we will be working to find those answers.
In his press release, the minister assured that his services "are committed to a full and transparent review of the way in which the Ahmaud Arbery case has been treated from the start". "The family, the community and the state of Georgia deserve answers," he said.
It was the broadcast on Tuesday of a video of the crime, which had gone viral, which relaunched the investigation.
"Very disturbing," says Trump
On the recording, we see Ahmaud Arbery running in a residential area of Brunswick. As he goes around a white pick-up on which a man is standing, he is stopped by a second man who grabs him. Then three shots were heard.
Police arrested the two men, Travis McMichael, 34, and his father Gregory McMichael, 64, who both live in Brunswick.
According to the February police report, Gregory McMichael told police that he thought Arbery was a suspect in a series of burglaries in the area.
A shock wave
The sequence caused a shock wave and the mobilization of several personalities, including basketball star LeBron James and actress Zoë Kravitz.
The footage is "very disturbing," President Donald Trump said in an interview on Friday with the Fox channel. "It is a very disturbing situation."
Hundreds of demonstrators, faces covered in masks to protect themselves from the Covid-19, gathered in the Brunswick court to demand justice.
Georgia police also arrested a man on Sunday for threatening potential protesters on Facebook.
Rashawn Smith, 20, has been arrested and "charged with disseminating information related to terrorist acts," police said in a statement on his website.
Police were alerted on Saturday to "a Facebook post which contained a threat to future protests against Ahmaud Arbery," the statement said.
With AFP
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