Oury Jalloh: Final report does not reveal a starting point for a murder investigation

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Entrance to detention cell 5 in the police station in Dessau-Rosslau (archive photo)

In the Oury Jalloh case, from the point of view of special advisors, there are no open approaches to investigate murder or attempted murder. This emerges from the final report, which will be handed over to the legal committee of the state parliament of Saxony-Anhalt on Friday. It is available to SPIEGEL and comprises 303 pages. 

Jalloh died in a fire in a detention cell in a police station in Dessau in 2005. His hands and feet were fixed on a mattress. According to the police officers responsible at the time, he is said to have lit himself with a lighter. In the following years there were several investigations, court proceedings and expert opinions, until the case went to the Federal Court of Justice. 

From the perspective of initiatives and human rights organizations, however, it has still not been clarified. Especially after a note in 2017, there were new questions: The then responsible senior public prosecutor suspected police officers of setting fire to Jalloh to cover up the use of force. In October 2017, however, the Halle public prosecutor closed the investigation. 

"Socially not yet worked up"

In April 2018, the government coalition made up of the CDU, SPD and Greens decided to have the Oury Jalloh case dealt with by two external legal advisors. The Legal Committee then commissioned the lawyer and former Green Party member Jerzy Montag and the former Munich Public Prosecutor Manfred Nötzel. "For 15 years now, death seems to have been dealt with socially, albeit legally," they write in a preliminary remark. At a later point it says: "In the conduct of the respective investigative proceedings, some weighty inconsistencies and contradictions were found."

For eight months, Montag and Nötzel were able to inspect thousands of pages of files and talk to those involved, including police officers from the Dessau district.

Oury Jalloh was picked up by police on the morning of January 7, 2005. Passers-by had called the officers and said they had been harassed. A police officer asked Jalloh for his ID without giving a reason. Jalloh refused to show any ID. The officers then forced Jalloh into a patrol car and took him to the police station.

In their final report, the special advisors come to the conclusion that Jalloh should not have died. The arrest and detention of Jalloh was unlawful, and his identity was not unclear, as claimed in retrospect. Jalloh would therefore "not have been taken into custody - or at least for a much shorter time. That way, his death could have been avoided," the report says.  

With regard to the discontinuation of the proceedings by the Halle public prosecutor in October 2017, the advisors came to the conclusion that this was "understandable and factually and legally correct in view of the evidence." The evidence was also properly stored: "The files did not reveal any evidence that evidence had disappeared or had been manipulated," write the consultants. However, they note "deficiencies in the anti-trace treatment of the lighter". 

In their conclusion, the consultants also state that the Ministry of the Interior of Saxony-Anhalt reacted appropriately: "The measures initiated and the specific instructions were targeted and showed great awareness of the problem and the will to remedy grievances in the custody of the state."

The state parliament was also mostly truthfully informed by the state government. From the consultant's point of view, this was not the case in only three cases. For example, Justice Minister Anne-Marie Keding informed the state parliament on September 28, 2017 "deliberately incomplete and therefore not truthfully".