Two years ago almost to the day, on February 23, 2020, Ahmaud Arbery, 25, was jogging in Brunswick, when he was chased by three white men, armed and aboard two pick-ups.

After a few minutes of chase, Travis McMichael had shot him.

For more than two months, the police had made no arrests and it took the broadcast of a video of the tragedy, relayed massively on the Internet, for the investigation to start.

During their first trial, the three men claimed to have taken the young African-American for an active burglar in the neighborhood and wanted to arrest him.

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.

“It has been a long and trying battle”

Ahmaud Arbery then became an emblem of the Black Lives Matter movement during the major anti-racist demonstrations of 2020. And a second federal trial opened, putting the racist question at the center of the debates.

The three white Americans were eventually found guilty of a "racist crime".

"I believe this is the first federal conviction of a hate crime in the state of Georgia," said family attorney Ben Crump, who also defended the relatives. of George Floyd.

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 reporters from Brunswick, a coastal town in Georgia.

"It's been a long and trying battle," added Ahmaud Arbery's mother, Wanda Cooper-Jones.

"We got a win today, but there are so many families that didn't," she said.

Two defendants have admitted their racist biases

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 described African-Americans as “criminals”, “monkeys”, “savages and sub-humans”.

The deliberations of the jury, made up of eight white people, three black people and one Hispanic, lasted less than a day.

As the federal trial approached, father and son McMichael had reached a plea agreement with prosecutors, admitting for the first time to having harbored racist prejudices.

The family was then fiercely opposed to this agreement, mother Wanda Cooper-Jones recalled on Tuesday, denouncing the decision of the prosecutors.

But this agreement, which would have allowed the two men to be transferred to a federal prison, was finally invalidated by a judge.

World

Murder of Ahmaud Arbery: Life in prison for the three white Americans who 'chased and shot' the black jogger

World

Murder of Ahmaud Arbery: A judge refuses a plea agreement

  • Black Lives Matter

  • Racism

  • Murder

  • United States

  • Justice

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