Trooper on Murder Charge for 1965 Civil Rights Shooting

A 73-year-old former Alabama policeman faces trial for murder after investigators reopened the case of a young black man shot dead during a protest march in 1965, an incident that helped spark the US civil rights movement.

A grand jury returned an indictment last night, the district attorney investigating the case said. He refused to identify the person charged, but a lawyer for James Bonard Fowler, a retired state trooper, said he had been told it was his client.

The charge relates to the death of 26-year-old Jimmie Lee Jackson who was shot dead by Mr Fowler during a civil rights protest in the town of Marion, Alabama in February 1965.

According to witnesses about 500 people were marching from a church towards the city jail to protest at the jailing of a civil rights worker when the street lights went out and police charged the crowd, beating them with batons.

A group of protesters ran into a cafe, among them Jackson. According to the cafe owner Jackson was shot dead while trying to help his mother and 82-year-old grandfather, the latter of whom had been clubbed to the floor by police.

Mr Fowler has always insisted he fired in self-defence after Jackson tried to grab his gun from its holster.

George Beck, Mr Fowler's lawyer, said: "I think somebody is trying to rewrite history and I don't think it's fair to this trooper."

Investigations into the case have been hampered by the deaths of some of those involved and the fact that news photographers had their cameras destroyed amid the violence. However, the district attorney said he had "strong witnesses".

Martin Luther King preached at Jackson's funeral, and days later black civil rights demonstrators began marching from Selma to Montgomery, two towns in Alabama. At Selma the protesters were attacked by club-wielding police in an incident that became known as "Bloody Sunday".

Television footage of the attack made Selma the centre of the civil rights movement. King, who was not present on Bloody Sunday, arrived to lead the famous Selma to Montgomery march later in the month.

Several criminal cases from the civil rights era in the southern US have been resurrected by prosecutors in recent years - there have been convictions over the 1963 Birmingham, Alabama church bombing that killed four black girls, and the 1964 killings of three civil rights volunteers near Philadelphia, Mississippi.

Willie Martin, 74, who was at the rally that ended in Jackson's death and appeared before the grand jury, said he was glad to see action taken after 42 years. "They kept it smothered down. We didn't have nobody to represent us back then," he said.