Rally urges justice for slain black man
Justice for Ahmaud Arbery, a black man killed during a pursuit by a white man and his son in Georgia, isn’t just prison time for his killers — it’s changes in a local justice system that never charged them with a crime, rallygoers said Saturday.
Hundreds of people came to the Glynn County courthouse demanding accountability for a case in which charges weren’t filed until state officials stepped in after a leaked video sparked national outrage.
Arbery, 25, was killed Feb. 23 just outside the port city of Brunswick, Ga., Gregory McMichael, 64, told police he and his son Travis McMichael, 34, pursued Arbery because they believed he was responsible for recent break-ins in the neighborhood.
The McMichaels weren’t arrested and charged with murder until May 7, after a video of the shooting was publicly released to a local radio station and less than 48 hours after state agents took over the case.
“Justice for Ahmaud is more than just the arrests of his killers,” said John Perry, president of the Brunswick NAACP chapter at the Saturday rally. “Justice is saying that we’ve got to clean up the house of Glynn County.”
Speakers at the rally demanded the resignation of Jackie Johnson, the district attorney for the Brunswick Judicial Circuit who recused herself from the investigation, and George Barnhill, the Waycross circuit district attorney who took over the case and declined to press charges. Gregory McMichael was an investigator in Ms. Johnson’s office before retiring last May. Both Ms. Johnson and Mr. Barnhill have denied wrongdoing.
Organizers of the rally said about 250 vehicles drove more than four hours from Atlanta for the rally.
Top fugitive in Rwanda genocide arrested
One of the most wanted fugitives in Rwanda’s 1994 genocide, a wealthy businessman accused of supplying machetes to killers and broadcasting propaganda urging mass slaughter, has been arrested outside Paris, authorities said Saturday.
Felicien Kabuga, 84, who had a $5 million bounty on his head, had been accused of equipping militias in the genocide that killed more than 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus who tried to protect them.
He had been living in a town north of Paris, Asnieres-Sur-Seine, under an assumed name, the appeals court’s prosecutor’s office said.
Bosnians protest Mass for Nazi-allied soldiers
Thousands of Bosnians, many wearing masks, demonstrated Saturday against a Mass in Sarajevo for Croatia’s Nazi-allied soldiers and civilians killed by partisan forces at the end of World War II.
The Mass in Sarajevo was a replacement for a controversial annual gathering usually held in Bleiburg, Austria, which was canceled due to restrictions imposed by the coronavirus pandemic. Another small replacement event took place Saturday at a cemetery in Zagreb, Croatia.
The decision to hold the Mass in Sarajevo provoked a strong backlash in a country where the memory of ethnic war in the 1990s is still fresh. It was condemned by Bosnia’s Serbian Orthodox Church, the Jewish and Muslim communities, and several antifascist organizations.