On January 7, 2005, Oury Jalloh, a young African from Sierra Leone/Guinea, was violently detained by police terrorists in the city of Dessau, Germany and taken to a holding cell in the basement of the local police station.
Four hours later, his body was found in a charcoaled state, his corpse chained at the hands and feet to a fireproof mattress.
On Thursday, December 13, 2012, the county court of Magdeburg, Germany failed to bring justice—with the police never having to face murder charges.
The court’s only conviction was a fine of 10,800 Euros for negligence on one of the officers involved.
Police terrorists, as well as the public prosecutor’s office, claim that Oury Jalloh set himself on fire.
The police manipulated the securing of evidence by adding a lighter to the presentation of evidence.
Oury Jalloh’s hands and feet were tied and handcuffed to metal handles that were attached to the wall and floor from the sides of the fireproof mattress.
All the police’s attempts to reconstruct how he could have set himself on fire failed—Oury Jalloh was unable to move.
Moreover, the police sabotaged the investigations by deleting the electronic data which documented who patrolled the cell block and the cell where Oury Jalloh was murdered.
They also deleted important parts of the video documentation of the securing of evidence, including video showing the cell directly after the incident.
They also got rid of the handcuffs Oury Jalloh was fixated with.
The “public prosecutor’s office” decided that the autopsy of Oury Jalloh’s body didn’t need to include an x-ray examination in order to rule out bone injuries of the skull or limbs.
It was only due to a second independently commissioned autopsy by the Initiative in Remembrance of Oury Jalloh, that it was ascertained that Oury Jalloh’s nose had been fractured and severe damage caused to his inner ear.
The supervising police terrorist and doctor in charge of examining Oury Jalloh referred to Oury in a racist manner.
Though recorded evidence documented this racist behavior, there were no actions taken at the colonial court to find out how Oury Jalloh received these injuries.
Activists resist, despite harassment and deportations
The court did decide to take actions against the African activists of the Initiative in Remembrance of Oury Jalloh.
They are followed and harassed by police terrorists on a daily basis, their phones are tapped and their resistance has been criminalized over and over again, leaving them with a variety of charges and the loss of their livelihoods.
Moreover, the German state has initiated several deportations of involved African activists in an attempt to weaken their resistance and will to organize against colonial violence.
During the first trial, the questioned police terrorists refused to testify and others contradicted themselves and made false testimonies.
The first trial ended with the acquittal of the two charged police terrorists who were simply accused of “non-assistance of a person in danger” in 2008.
The Initiative in Remembrance of Oury Jalloh fought for an appeal, which started in January 2011, after the acquittal of the supervising police terrorist Andreas Schubert had been reversed prior to this.
The retrial was again characterized by cover ups, lies and repression.
Each court hearing date went along with an enormous and unusually high police presence as the members of the Initiative had officially been classified as security threats by the court.
The county court even attempted to officially close the case and eradicate any other possibility of taking legal steps by terminating the proceedings against the payment of the fine.
The Initiative defeated this move in March 2012 by applying pressure through campaigning and raising public attention towards the case.
The county court of Magdeburg now ended the proceedings by sentencing Andreas Schubert to a fine of 10,800 Euros for negligence.
A closer look at the evidence
Recent findings strongly indicate that the lighter, later added to the presentation of evidence, could not have been in the cell where Oury Jalloh burned to death.
The lighter was merely charred although it would have had to explode given the temperature of the fire.
Furthermore, no traces of the inside of the cell were found on the lighter.
Moreover, it was established that the position Oury Jalloh’s body was in, the state of the burnt mattress and the fact that noradrenalin, a hormone produced in stress situations, couldn’t be found in Oury Jalloh’s system all point to him not being conscious when the fire started, which would also explain his injuries.
Throughout the proceedings, the assigned arson investigators had been instructed to act on the assumption of Oury Jalloh setting himself on fire, preventing an open investigation of all possible causes of the fire.
In a long search for an arson investigator to openly investigate the course of the fire, InPDUM found an international arson investigator willing to do so.
This arson investigator ascertained the above-mentioned findings and concluded that neither the state of Oury Jalloh’s body, nor the mattress he was fixated to, nor the color of the flames are likely to have been possible without the use of a fire accelerant.
The daily face of colonialism
Despite these crucial findings, all motions to further investigate the fire and the possibility of a third party being responsible had been denied by the court, including a motion asking the court to recuse itself due to bias.
The county court of Magdeburg, as well as the prosecution, stuck to the suicide construction, declaring they saw no indication for the fire to have been set by someone else.
They rejected all notions of deliberate intention on the side of the accused and the police department, denied the further questioning of involved police terrorists and refused investigations in the direction of murder.
InPDUM has been struggling and mobilizing around the murder of Oury Jalloh and countless other Africans murdered by the German state, which are all expressions of colonial violence.
The fact of Oury Jalloh’s murder is yet another case of an African murdered by police terrorists.
The course and outcome of the trial and re-trial are yet again proof of the ongoing colonial attacks on Africans.
Moreover Oury Jalloh’s life exemplifies the many forms in which colonial violence occurs.
From diamond-rich Sierra Leone, he was forced to flee due to proxy wars taking place there and then had to chase his resources to Germany/Europe.
There he was classified as “rejected asylum seeker” by the colonial migration regime, and finally, police terrorists contained and murdered him.
The trial and re-trial regarding his murder were built upon the police and colonial judicial system constructing lies, beginning with the claim that Oury Jalloh set himself on fire.
His case also makes clear what a profound role the courts and judicial system play as a part of the colonial violence we as Africans face on a daily basis worldwide, as they justify and legitimize this violence waged against us.
The law being nothing else but the opinion of those in power, being nothing else than white power, serves as an instrument of the state maintaining the status quo.
The course of the case and its outcome show what colonial justice is—the colonizer will never take on responsibility for his actions and there is no justice to be expected from our colonial oppressors.
It is only our organization and struggle for liberation, self-determination and therefore State power, that can overturn this colonial system oppressing and murdering our people.
Death to imperialism!
All Power to the People!
Black Power to the African Community!
