Dismay at racist torture

FOUR black people have been charged with hate crimes in connection with a video broadcast live on Facebook that showed a mentally disabled white man being beaten and taunted, threatened with a knife and forced to drink from a toilet.

The Chicago assault went on for hours, until police found the disoriented victim walking along a street, authorities said.

The suspects, who were jailed, can be heard on the video using profanities against white people and President-elect Donald Trump.

They are Jordan Hill, 18, Tesfaye Cooper, 18, Brittany Covington, 18, and Tanishia Covington, 24, all of Chicago.

They face charges of aggravated kidnapping, hate crime, aggravated unlawful restraint and aggravated battery with a deadly weapon, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.

Images of the crime were shown on news reports across the world and even provoked a response from the White House, where press secretary Josh Earnest said the beating demonstrated “a level of depravity that is an outrage to a lot of Americans”.

He said he had not yet spoken to President Barack Obama.

Police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said investigators initially concluded the 18-yearold man was singled out because he has “special needs,” not because he was white.

But authorities later said the charges resulted from both the suspects’ use of racial slurs and their references to the victim’s disability. It’s also possible the suspects were trying to extort something from the victim’s family, police said.

The man’s parents reported their son missing on Monday and told authorities they later received text messages from people who claimed to be holding him captive.