GERMANY:Two years ago, police in the eastern German city of Dessau picked up off the street a drunken asylum seeker from Sierra Leone. Three hours after putting the 21-year-old in a police cell to sober up, they discovered his charred, lifeless body in a cloud of acrid smoke.
Yesterday two Dessau officers went on trial charged with dereliction of duty resulting in the death of Oury Jalloh in a case tainted by allegations of police brutality, incompetence and racism.
Mr Jalloh, who came to Germany five years ago, was brought into the police station on the morning of January 7th, 2005. Officer Hans-Ulrich März (44) told the Dessau court yesterday that he took the man to a basement cell and stripped him down to his jeans. Because Mr Jalloh fought him off, Mr März bound him hand and foot and chained him to a mattress in the cell.
Almost three hours later, the station smoke alarm was triggered. Thinking it was a false alarm, duty officer Andreas Schubert (46) switched it off. A few minutes later, he switched off another, separate alarm from the cell ventilation system.
Through an intercom Mr Schubert could hear Mr Jalloh shouting and swearing one floor below. As fire took hold in the cell, the temperature began to rise. "There was a rippling sound, I assumed it was a water blockage. The toilets in the cells aren't the newest and are often blocked up," said Mr Schubert yesterday. He was on the phone at the time and turned down the intercom volume.
"When I heard no further sounds, that was the moment I thought something wasn't right and at that moment the third alarm went off." When Mr Schubert opened the cell door, six minutes after the fire started, Mr Jalloh had died of heat shock.
The duty officer faces charges of negligent manslaughter.
It remains unclear how the fire started. The state prosecutor assumes that Mr März overlooked a cigarette lighter when searching Mr Jalloh's trousers and has charged him with involuntary manslaughter.
"I frisked the trouser legs and his pockets and I am sure there was no cigarette lighter anywhere, I would have felt it," said Mr März in a statement. "As he had no cigarettes there was no reason to think he would have a lighter." The dead man's mother, in court yesterday, has joined the case as co-plaintiff. They doubt the official version of events, in particular that Mr Jalloh would set fire to himself.
"At this point we don't know if racism played a role here, but something stinks," said Mouctar Bar, a friend of the dead man.
Leaked telephone transcripts from that day show police officers made jokes about the dead man's skin colour and his death. A second autopsy, carried out for the family, revealed that Mr Jalloh had a broken nose and cuts on one ear. Five years ago, another man was found dead with a cracked skull in one of the station's cells, also on Andreas Schubert's watch.
"Mr Jalloh's mother requests a more detailed investigation, not just concentrating on März and Schubert. It is still unclear how the fire started," said the family's lawyer yesterday. "She has a right to a full explanation."
The elderly woman in a white silk sari lasted only minutes in the courtroom before she crumpled over, weeping. The last two men to see her son alive sat impassively opposite her, throwing occasional glances at the clock ticking over their heads.
They face prison sentences of up to 15 years. A verdict is expected next month.