The United States has criticised the United Kingdom's handling of the murder of a white student by a Sikh man, a high-profile case that has sparked angry protests.The case of 18-year-old Henry Nowak, who was handcuffed by police as he lay mortally wounded after being stabbed in the port city of Southampton in December, has become highly politicised in the UK.Attacker Vickrum Digwa lied and told police Nowak had racially abused him and that he was the victim.Far-right activists have cited the case as an example of so-called "two-tier policing", in which officers allegedly deal with ethnic minorities more leniently.The US state department agreed with that assessment in a statement on Friday."Ideological conditioning and two-tiered policing are glaring symptoms of civilizational decline," the agency said in a post on X Starmer has called the bodycam footage of Nowak's death, during which the victim can repeatedly be heard telling officers he could not breathe, "harrowing".On Friday, he said there were "difficult questions that need to be answered about the way the police handled Henry's murder".The UK's Independent Office for Police Conduct watchdog is investigating.An inquest into whether police contributed to Nowak's death will open in front of a jury in September 2027, officials announced Thursday.Black people in England and Wales are more than twice as likely to be arrested as white people, according to government statistics.And an independent report last year found Britain's largest police force, London's Metropolitan Police, was "institutionally racist".For the latest from SBS News, download our app and subscribe to our newsletter.