Police violence targeting people of colour, migrants and socially disadvantaged people is a very worrying problem that increasingly leads to deadly consequences. A notable case in Germany inspired the institution of an International Independent Commission formed by nine members.

Two of them, Arturo Salerni and Mario Angelelli, are lawyers from Progetto Diritti, one of the member organisations of the Italian Coalition for Civil Liberties and Rights. Their experience on human rights topics is very deep, as they took part in several important trials, such as the one that unveiled the political intrigues of Operation Condor and the one regarding the responsibility of the Italian Navy in the shipwreck of a boat of migrants in 2013 near Lampedusa.

The death of Oury Jalloh

Oury Jalloh fled from the civil war in Sierra Leone to find protection in Guinea, and from there moved to Germany. After he was denied asylum in Germany, he continued to live on the margins of society in the town of Dessau.

Arrested on 6 January 2005 for public drunkenness, he was kept in a holding cell in the Dessau police station - the same cell where he was found burned to death a short time later.

During the trial, the police officers present on the night of Jalloh's death stated that, despite the fact that he had had his wrists and ankles tied to his bed, he had somehow managed to use a lighter to set fire to the mattress without any of the officers noticing.

When the fire alarm did go off, the officers at first ignored it, and firemen arrived at the station when it was already too late to save Jalloh. In large part because of the testimony of the police officers, the case led to public outrage and to several protests in Germany and other countries.

Inconsistencies

In the past 13 years, the investigative authorities have never considered the possibility that someone might have killed Jalloh. To this day, all official findings conclude that he set himself on fire. Despite this, external and independent investigations have pointed out several inconsistencies with the official narrative and concluded that it would have been impossible for Jalloh to start the fire in the manner officially accepted by the state.

Then in April 2017, prosecutor Folker Bittmann, who had defended the police report on Jalloh's death for many years, changed his mind. He called for a new investigation, this time for murder.

According to one of the documents filed for the new investigation, Bittmann stated his belief that the mattress was set on fire with the aid of an inflammable liquid - after Jalloh’s death. The fire would have been started to hide the evidence of another crime committed against the prisoner. Despite Bittmann's urging, the regional prosecutors' office refused to open a new investigation and the case was sent back to the local prosecutor's office in Halle, which on 12 October declared the case closed due to the lack of concrete evidence.

Ending police violence

As clarified in its founding statement, the International Independent Commission was formed to try to uncover the totality of events connected to the death of Oury Jalloh, as well as to establish key issues related to the legal oversight and investigation of cases of deaths in custody.

The commission's report examining the death of Jalloh will try to answer the unanswered questions surrounding this tragedy. Jalloh’s story is in fact symptomatic of a wider phenomenon identified by the commission of the “growing number of attacks internationally by police on people of colour, migrants and socially disadvantages people.”

The time has come for a civilian-led examination of police behaviour to end all kinds of violence and ill-treatment.