Long-awaited indictment of three men for murder of black jogger in the United States

Arrested late after the death of a black jogger in the southern United States, three men were charged with murder by a grand jury on Wednesday June 25.

Ahmaud Arbery, 25, was killed on February 23 while running in a residential neighborhood in Brunswick, Georgia, a region with a long apartheid past.

For more than two months, the local police did not make any arrests. It was necessary to broadcast a video of the drama, which was massively relayed on social networks in early May, before the investigation was removed from them and really started.

A former investigator attached to the local prosecutor's office, Gregory McMichael, 64, and his son Travis, 34, visible in the video, were arrested on May 7. The recording author, William Bryan, 50, was arrested two weeks later.

On the arrest warrants, several charges were mentioned, including "murder" and "attempted unlawful arrest". The indictment was formalized on Wednesday by a grand jury - a group of citizens appointed to hear prosecutions.

"It was a lynching"

They "caused his death by chasing him with pick-ups (...) and shooting him with firearms", can be read in this document.

The McMichaels and Bryan are each facing 1 count of malice murder, 4 counts felony murder, 2 counts aggravated assault, 1 count false imprisonment and 1 count criminal attempt to commit false imprisonment.

"This confirms what Ahmaud's father has said for months: that it was a lynching," said family attorney Ben Crump in a statement. Welcoming a "significant step on the road to justice", he hoped that the trial of the three men would end with "sentences reflecting the hateful nature of their crime".

The name of Ahmaud Arbery has been chanted for weeks across the United States in the context of giant protests against violence against African Americans, at the same time as that of George Floyd, asphyxiated by a white police officer in Minneapolis, and Breonna Taylor, shot dead at her home in Louisville by agents who had apparently gotten the apartment wrong.

With AFP

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