Photo: PAUL J. RICHARDS / AFP / Getty Images
By: EFE
Monday, September 30
Organizers of the 2017 Charlottesville Supremacist March to Pay $ 25 Million in Damages
WASHINGTON – The organizers of the march of white supremacists that took place four years ago in Charlottesville , Virginia, they will have to pay $ 25 millions of dollars to the protesters against Nazism who were injured, ruled this Tuesday a popular jury.
The jury’s decision is directed against 12 individuals and 5 organizations of the march “Unite the Right” (“Join Right”), in which more than 50 people were injured and a woman from 32 years died when hit by the car driven by a neo-Nazi.
Among the accused are some of the supremacists best known targets in the US, such as Jason Kessler, the main organizer of the march, and Christopher Cantwell , who became known as the “crying Nazi” after a video circulating on social networks in which he is seen reacting in a emotional to an arrest warrant in a different case.
The procedure was opened as a result of the claim filed by four men and five women who were injured during the violence that broke out in the march .
Three of the plaintiffs suffered concussions, one of them had a skull fracture and most claim to experience post-traumatic stress disorder, which causes insomnia, inability to concentrate and panic attacks.
Despite the $ 25 millions of dollars in damages, the ruling was not entirely favorable to the plaintiffs .
Specifically, the popular jury could not reach an agreement on two federal charges with which it was argued that the organizers of the march had conspired to commit violent acts motivated by racist ideas .
The 11 and 12 August 2017, a group of neo-Nazis marched through the streets of Charlottesville with torches and chanting xenophobic slogans in order to protest the removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee, a Confederate slave general during The US Civil War
That protest was answered by an anti-fascist march calling on neo-Nazis to leave Charlottesville.
It was at that time that the neo-Nazi James Alex Fields Jr. took his vehicle and ran over the crowd of the counter-protesters , which led to the death of the woman of 27 years Heather Heyer, an event that was captured on video and that shook the United States.
In this context, the then president Donald Trump caused a great controversy by blaming both neo-Nazi groups and left-wing protesters for the violence and, in addition, came to consider that there were “very good” people among the supremacists.
During the incidents, two policemen were also killed in a helicopter accident when they came to quell the protests.
– The neo-Nazi who ran over people in Charlottesville is charged with murder