The Justice Minister of Georgia (south) called for a federal investigation on Sunday into the handling of the murder of a black jogger which aroused great emotion in the country.
Ahmaud Arbery, 25, was shot dead on February 23 while jogging in a residential neighborhood in Brunswick, a city in Georgia, a state in the southern United States. Georgia police announced on Thursday the arrest and charge of two white men believed to have killed him while he was unarmed. The 74-day delay between the murder and the arrests, which occurred two days after a video of the murder was released, raises questions.
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" I have formally requested the Justice Department to investigate the handling of this case, " Georgian Justice Minister Chris Carr wrote on Twitter linking his tweet to the official statement sent to the Justice Department at Washington. Chris Carr said in his statement that his services " are in favor of a full and transparent review of how the Ahmaud Arbery case has been handled from the start ". " The family, the community and the state of Georgia deserve answers, " he said.
The Tuesday broadcast of a video of the crime, which went viral, had relaunched the investigation. On this 28-second recording made by a cell phone, we see Ahmaud Arbery running in a residential district 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. We hear three shots. The streak 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 Fox on Friday. " It is a very disturbing situation ."
Read also: United States: a great stir after the murder of a black jogger
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. McMichael said he took a .357 magnum while his son grabbed a shotgun. When they caught up with Arbery and Travis McMichael got out of the truck with the shotgun, Arbery began to " attack him violently, " the father said, according to the police report. The father said he saw his son shoot Arbery and the jogger fall to the ground. " It is heartbreaking to see that this is happening in 2020 and that it was the lynching of an African-American, " Atlanta mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms told CNN on Sunday.
In an advertisement that appeared in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Sunday, rapper Jay-Z and singer Alicia Keys called on the Governor and Minister of Justice of Georgia to " guarantee a fair trial ". " If you take the necessary measures, you will send a message to people who want to bring Georgia back to a time when African Americans were killed just because they were going to vote. Hatred and fear will lose . ”