Mr Zimmerman, a member of the neighbourhood watch, had called police to report
a suspicious-looking black male in the area, and had been told to remain in
his car and not follow the suspect.
President Obama has expressed his condolences to the Martin family, and the
Miami Heat basketball team posted Twitter photographs of themselves wearing “hoodies”
– a reference to the type of hooded seatshirt which Trayvon was wearing when
he was shot.
Mr Oliver, who is himself black, added that Mr Zimmerman is “just now
becoming aware of how big this has gotten”.
He told ABC news: “I think when the other 911 tapes are released, and the
other evidence comes out, I think it will show clearly that George Zimmerman
was acting in self defence.”
The New Black Panthers are inspired by The Black Panthers revolutionary party,
which took a militant approach to the championing of African-American
equality between the 1960s and 1980s, but the two are not formally linked.
Founded in 1989, and immediately rejected by
the original Black Panthers, the new party has been named by the US Commission
on Civil Rights as a hate group.
Meanwhile, Newt Gingrich, the Republican presidential candidate, has described
Mr Obama’s comments on the killing as “disgraceful”.
Speaking at the White House on Friday, Mr Obama had highlighted the teenager’s
race, by saying: “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon.”
In response, Mr Gingrich said: “What the president said, in a sense, is
disgraceful. It’s not a question of who that young man looked like.
“Any young American of any ethnic background should be safe, period. We
should all be horrified no matter what the ethnic background. Is the
president suggesting that if it had been a white who had been shot, that
would be OK because it didn’t look like him?”
David Plouffe, a senior adviser to President Obama, described the comments by
Mr Gingrich, who is an outsider for the Republican nomination, as
“irresponsible and reprehensible”.
He told CNN: “I don’t think there’s very many people in America that would
share that reaction.
“I think the president spoke movingly about this tragedy, as a father, made
it clear that there’s an investigation going on. So I think those comments
were really hard to stomach, really, and I guess trying to appeal to
people’s worst instincts.”
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