Death of Oury Jalloh

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Oury Jalloh's face on a banner at a Black Lives Matter demonstration in Berlin, 2020

Oury Jalloh (1968 in Kabala, Sierra Leone[1] – 7 January 2005, in Dessau, Germany) was an asylum seeker who died in a fire in a police cell in Dessau, Germany. The hands and feet of Jalloh, who was alone in the cell, were tied to a mattress. A fire alarm went off, but was initially turned off without further action by an officer. The case caused national and international outrage.

Life[]

According to his tombstone in Sierra Leone, Oury Jalloh was born in 1968.[2] In 2000, he fled from the Sierra Leone Civil War to Guinea, where his parents were already living, and then further to Germany, where he applied for political asylum.[3][1] Although his application was declined, he remained in the country. His child with a German citizen was put up for adoption by the mother shortly after birth.[4] Several weeks before his death, Jalloh was convicted to a prison sentence of three and a half years for commercial drug trafficking.

Death[]

In the morning of January 7, 2005, at about 8 am, some street cleaners called the police and reported that a female colleague felt threatened by a drunk man. When the police arrived, Jalloh declined to present a passport and then resisted arrest. Nevertheless the officers took him into custody, intending to book him for harassment.
A blood alcohol test later revealed a BAC of about 0.3%. Because of his intoxication and uncooperative behaviour he was put in a basement cell under constant audio surveillance and his hands and feet were tied to his bunk.[a]

Policewoman Beate H. was working in the first floor control room, together with her superior Andreas S.[b] She testified that her colleagues had checked on Jalloh in his cell several times in the hours before the fire broke out. Each time they left she tried to calm Jalloh down over the intercom. She went to check on him herself at about 11:30 am, noting nothing special. The cell was reported to be completely empty except for Jalloh on a rubber foam mattress tied to his bunk.

When she returned to the control room, Jalloh continued shouting loudly over the intercom.[c] This annoyed Andreas S. who tried to concentrate on his telephone calls and turned the volume down. Beate H. protested against this and tried to turn it up again. Around noon, the cell's fire alarm went off for the first time. S. turned the alarm off once, then another time. When the air ventilation's fire alarm also went off, H. urged S. to go and check.
At this point Beate H. became aware that a soft "splashing" noise she had been hearing in the background was the sound of burning fire over the intercom. She went on to listen to her colleagues arrive at the cell and could hear Jalloh weakly muttering his final word: "Fire."

Gerhard M., the officer who first arrived at the burning cell, together with S., reported heavy smoke coming from the room. The men thought at first that they would not be able to enter. Shift leader Andreas S. reportedly ran off at this point to call for help from other officers.
M. testified in court that when he finally entered the cell, Jalloh was still alive, though badly burned. M. did not know where the keys were and tried to smother the flames with a blanket, but could otherwise not do much to help Jalloh.

The official autopsy concluded that the immediate cause of death was likely heat shock to Jalloh's lungs by smoke inhalation. Another 2019 autopsy conducted by experts from Goethe University and commissioned by Jalloh's family, found that he had a broken rib and fractures to his septum and the base of his skull, suggesting that Oury Jalloh may have been tortured before his death. The original autopsy had only listed a recent nose fracture.[4][5][6][7]

2006 documentary film[]

In 2006, Berlin film makers Pagonis Pagonakis and Marcel Kolvenbach produced a documentary film titled Tod in der Zelle – Warum starb Oury Jalloh? (transl. Death in a cell - Why did Oury Jalloh die?).
Besides publicizing the suspicious circumstances of his death, the film also takes a look at Oury Jalloh's childhood origins and his time as a young man in the Sierra Leone civil war. Published at a time when authorities had still not decided whether to open a trial at all, the film helped bring publicity to the previously rather obscure case.
It went on to win the "Best professional production" award at the 2006  [de].[2][8]

Official investigations and prosecutions[]

In March 2007, a trial was opened at the state court of Dessau[d] against police officers Hans-Ulrich M. and his superior, Andreas S. The two officers were charged for causing bodily harm with fatal consequences, and for involuntary manslaughter, respectively.[4]
On 8 December 2008 the court acquitted both defendants of all charges. According to Manfred Steinhoff, the presiding judge, contradictory testimony had prevented clarification of the circumstances and had obstructed due process. In his closing speech Steinhoff accused the police officers of lying in court and thus damaging the reputation of the state of Saxony-Anhalt.[5][9]

On January 7, 2010, exactly five years after Jalloh died handcuffed in his cell, the Bundesgerichtshof federal court in Karlsruhe overturned the earlier verdict. The case was relegated to the state court of Saxony-Anhalt at Magdeburg for retrial.[10]

During the investigations the deaths of Hans-Jürgen Rose (died from internal injuries hours after being released from the same police building in 1997) and Mario Bichtemann (died from an unsupervised skull fracture in the same cell in 2002)[4] were re-examined. They still remain unexplained.

In August 2020 the Landtag of Saxony-Anhalt published a report by special investigators Jerzy Montag and  [de] on the Jalloh case, calling the policemen's actions "flawed" and "contrary to the law" (German: "fehlerhaft" und "rechtswidrig"). However, they concluded that the district attorney's final dismissal of the case in 2017 was "factually and legally correct in view of available evidence".[7][11]

See also[]

  • Deaths in custody

Notes[]

  1. ^ During the final phase of the 2008 trial, codefendant Hans-Ulrich M. testified that he suddenly remembered that he might have lost his lighter in the cell while tying Jalloh down.
  2. ^ In the 2008 trial Beate H. was the only police witness willing to testify about flaws in her superior's actions.
  3. ^ Jalloh mostly screamed for them to "Come back!" (German: "Komm zurück!") at this point, according to the testimony of Beate H.
  4. ^ Called Landgericht Dessau-Roßlau from July 2007, when the towns of Dessau and Ro��lau formed an administrative union.

References[]

  1. ^ Jump up to: a b Overath 2011.
  2. ^ Jump up to: a b Pagonakis & Kolvenbach 2006.
  3. ^ Zell & Meier 2009, p. 7.
  4. ^ Jump up to: a b c d von Bouillon 2007.
  5. ^ Jump up to: a b Peters 2008.
  6. ^ Kreickenbaum 2012.
  7. ^ Jump up to: a b Douglas 2020.
  8. ^ Westphal 2006.
  9. ^ Deutsche Welle trial report 2008.
  10. ^ Deutsche Welle retrial decision 2010.
  11. ^ Montag & Nötzel 2020.

Sources[]

Further reading[]

English[]

German[]

Verdicts[]

  • First verdict by the state court of Dessau-Roßlau (2008)
    • Dessau-Roßlau state court's press release about the first verdict:
      Straube, Frank (9 December 2008). "6 Ks 4/05 - Strafverhandlung in der Sache Ouri Jalloh" [6 Ks 4/05 - Criminal trial in the case of Ouri Jalloh]. sachsen-anhalt.de (Press release) (in German). Dessau. Landgericht Dessau-Roßlau. Archived from the original on 1 July 2021. Retrieved 1 July 2021.
  • 2010 verdict by the Federal Court of Justice, overturning the 2008 verdict and ordering a retrial
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