Michael Brown’s mom taking son’s case to the UN Committee Against Torture

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According to Vice News, “Lesley McSpadden, the mother of the 18-year-old boy (Michael Brown) whose death at the hands of a Ferguson police officer in August sparked weeks of protests, is going to Geneva, Switzerland next month to speak about her son and other victims of police brutality in front of the United Nations. Mike Brown’s killing is still under investigation by federal officials, while a local grand jury tasked with deciding whether to charge officer Darren Wilson for his death is supposed to make an announcement any day — with few in Ferguson believing that an indictment is likely. But with little faith in the justice her son will receive, McSpadden, accompanied by one of the family’s lawyers and a handful of local activists and human rights advocates, is taking her son’s case — and that of other victims of racial profiling and police violence — straight to the UN Committee Against Torture, the body tasked with preventing torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment and punishment around the world.”

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Vice says “The trip — which was recently made public by organizers and promoted under the tagline “Ferguson to Geneva” — is meant to make a case, to as wide an audience as possible, that both Brown’s killing and the militarized police response to protesters demanding justice for him, are a matter of human rights. “It’s actually covered by article one of the convention against torture,” Justin Hansford, a law professor at Saint Louis University and co-author of a brief to the UN body filed by Brown’s family and local activists, told Vice News. “When the government has all the guns, all the force, and when they can kill people with impunity and without fear of being found guilty of a crime, that’s a classic example of state violence.” “You see this in dictatorships and regimes where they do this to their own citizens and they get away with it,” he added.”

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