Jury selection began on Monday in the trial of the three white men charged in the death Ahmaud Arbery as he was jogging in a south Georgia neighbourhood on February 23, 2020.
The process to select the 12 jurors — plus four alternates — could last two weeks or more.
Arbery’s father said he is praying for an impartial panel and a fair trial, saying black crime victims too often have been denied justice.
“This is 2021 and it’s time for a change,” Marcus Arbery Sr said in an interview. “We need to be treated equally and get fair justice as human beings, because we’ve been treated wrong so long.”
Court officials in Glynn County, Georgia, mailed jury-duty notices to 1,000 people, expecting a potentially slow process to find jurors in a community where the killing dominated news coverage and swamped social media feeds.
Arbery, a 25-year-old black man, was jogging when he was chased down by three men and fatally shot.
Two of the men, Gregory McMichael and his son, Travis, said they suspected Arbery of burglary and were conducting a citizen's arrest. The third man, William “Roddie” Bryan Jr, recorded a video of Travis McMichael shooting Arbery from close range three times with a shotgun.
The circulated video of Arbery's death, along with the killing of Breonna Taylor and murder of George Floyd, sparked a movement across the US about the mistreatment of black people by law enforcement.
Greg McMichael said Travis fired his gun in self-defence after Arbery attacked him, punching and trying to grab the weapon.
Investigators have said that they found no evidence of crimes by Arbery in the Georgia neighbourhood where he was shot. He was unarmed.
Civil rights activists and Arbery's family say it was another example of a targeted attack on a black man.
“He was killed because he was a black man in Brunswick,” Mr Arbery told Reuters. “There's a God who is watching and he will put this all right.”
Arbery’s killing stoked outrage in the summer of 2020 during a period of national protests over racial injustice. More than two months passed before the McMichaels and Mr Bryan were charged and jailed, only after the video of the shooting leaked online and state investigators took over the case from local police.
The high-profile trial is likely to draw scores of protesters outside the courthouse in Brunswick, prompting community leaders to call for unity.
“After the trial is over and the busloads of demonstrators and media leave, we still have to live here. We still have to live with each other,” said Allen Booker, who represents Brunswick as the only black Glynn County commissioner.
Rabbi Rachael Bregman from a local synagogue said that when the trial begins, Brunswick will face more intense scrutiny and must rise to the challenge.
“We need to communicate to the world beyond Brunswick, we need to be positive. This community is working hard to stand together,” she said.
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Fuel economy, combined 35.2L / 100km (est)
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The low down
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Rating: 2/5
Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”