Thousands protest in new US race row

Thousands of chanting demonstrators filled the streets of the little Louisiana town of Jena in America's Deep South today in support of six black teenagers initially charged with attempted murder in the beating of a white classmate.

The crowd broke into chants of "Free the Jena Six" as civil rights leader the Rev Al Sharpton arrived at the local courthouse with family members of the jailed teens.

Martin Luther King III, son of the slain civil rights leader, said the scene was reminiscent of earlier civil rights struggles. He said punishment of some sort may be in order for the six defendants, but "the justice system isn't applied the same to all crimes and all people".

The six teens were charged not long after the local prosecutor declined to charge three white high school students who hung nooses in a tree on their high school grounds - evoking for some the image of lynchings in the old South.

Five of the black teenagers were initially charged with attempted murder, but that charge was reduced to battery for all but one. The sixth teenager was charged as a juvenile.

"This is the most blatant example of disparity in the justice system that we've seen," the Rev Al Sharpton said on US television before arriving in Jena. "You can't have two standards of justice."

"We didn't bring race into it," he said. "Those people who hung up the nooses brought race into it."

The nooses appeared after a black student expressed interest in sitting under a tree where whites usually congregated, and inflamed racial tensions in the town. The charges against the six teenagers further escalated tensions.

The district attorney who is prosecution the teenagers, Reed Walters, denied on Wednesday that racism was involved in the charges.

He said he did not charge the white students accused of hanging up the nooses because he could find no Louisiana law under which they could be charged.

In the beating case, he said, four of the defendants were of adult age under Louisiana law and the only juvenile charged as an adult, Mychal Bell, had a prior criminal record.

"It is not and never has been about race," he said. "It is about finding justice for an innocent victim and holding people accountable for their actions."

The white teen who was beaten, Justin Barker, was knocked unconscious, his face badly swollen and bloodied, though he was able to attend a school function later that night.

Bell, 16 at the time of the attack, is the only one of the "Jena Six" to be tried so far.

He was convicted on an aggravated second-degree battery count that could have sent him to prison for 15 years, but the conviction was overturned last week when a state appeals court said he should not have been tried as an adult.

Thursday's protest had been planned to coincide with Bell's sentencing, but organisers decided to press ahead even after the conviction was thrown out.

Bell remains in jail while prosecutors prepare an appeal.