Hundreds of protesters arrested during US President Donald Trump’s inauguration rallies are likely to receive decades-long jail sentences, a new report has revealed.
Police arrested more than 230 people on January 20, the day thousands of people headed to Washington, DC, to protest Trump’s swearing-in, Al Jazeera reported Wednesday.
Law enforcement officers began indiscriminately detaining people after Black Bloc anarchists and anti-fascists clashed with police and vandalized public property.
Only a day later, most of the detainees were charged with felony rioting, looking at a maximum sentence of a $25,000 fine and 10 years in prison.
However, in late April, the Superior Court of the District of Columbia leveled a superseding indictment against 212 of the protesters, raising the maximum prison sentence to a whopping 80 years for some defendants.
The figure stood at 70 years for the rest of the defendants, including some journalists.
The new…