The parents of Irishman Oisín Osborn, shot dead by Hamburg police in May 2019, have succeeded in having the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) examine their case against Germany.
The Osborns believe the killing of their son, 10 days after he became a father, resulted from excessive police force. The case, which never came to trial, has now been re-examined in a German television documentary aired on Tuesday evening – and an upcoming RTÉ Documentary on One on Radio 1 this Saturday.
It comes as new data shows how German police fatally shot 17 people so far this year, the highest such figure since 1999, with a high incidence involving people experiencing mental health issues.
Oisín Osborn’s parents and his widow, Nikol, agree he was having such issues on May 22nd, 2019.
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[ Why did German police shoot Oisín Osborn dead?Opens in new window ]
Nikol Osborn woke up to find her 34 year-old husband, a trained engineer, pacing manically and laying out knives around the room. She made an emergency call seeking medical assistance for her 34-year-old husband but her mention of knives saw the call forwarded to the police.
Minutes later a special forces unit burst into the family home and officers, mistaking a cigarette lighter for a cartridge, rushed upstairs expecting an armed man.
On the landing they were confronted by Oisín Osborn, wearing a pot on his head. Tucked into his waistband was a spatula police mistook for a knife. Police officers, in protective gear and wielding large protective shields, said they used pepper spray to no avail. Then, as Osborn approached them, two officers fired six shots in total. The shots went through Osborn’s throat area, his trunk, thigh, arm and chest.
“The police had no taser, no body-cams, no training and were exonerated on grounds of self defence after putting six bullets through our son’s body,” said Katrina Osborn, who was born in Abbeyleix but grew up in Castletroy, Co Limerick.
[ Oisín Osborn ‘wasn’t himself that day’ but why did German police shoot him dead?Opens in new window ]
The police officers who shot Osborn declined to testify in the subsequent investigation. For Katrina Osborn, the decision to close the case without trial “seems like a systematic cover-up: not just by police but by the public prosecutor and the courts, too”.
After exhausting all legal avenues in Germany, and unable to launch a private prosecution, the Osborn’s petition to the ECHR in Luxembourg has passed initial screening stage but could take years to progress.
The NDR documentary aired on Tuesday evening flagged how Germany’s 16 federal states have no independent police ombudsman for such fatal police shooting cases. Instead they are investigated by the colleagues of the suspect as well as prosecutors, who have close day-to-day contact with police. Only three federal states have obligatory police training for recognising and dealing with people who may be in psychologically extreme situations.
Oisín Osborn’s father David is hopeful that the renewed media interest – amid growing reports on police killings – will increase interest in their case before the ECHR and contribute to change in Germany.
“This is not just us,” he said. “Over 90 per cent of the time in these cases police are exonerated, prosecutors close the case, blame the victim and brush everything under the carpet.”
German police violence and killings are the subjects of a new investigative book, titled All Just One-Off Cases.
Its author, Mohamed Amjahid, said the Osborn case fits into a pattern in Germany, where about 75 per cent of people killed by police either have a history of mental health issues or are having a psychotic episode during the confrontation.
“The scandal is not just that this keeps happening, but that police continue to cover things up,” he said. “And it appears societal consensus that this is an effective solution: to send in the police and sideline the problem.”
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