Karlsruhe - For one week, the Federal Court of Justice (BGH) took the time to examine the judgment of the Landgericht in the case of Ouri Jallow on legal errors. Now the 4th Criminal Senate has announced its decision: The process, arguably one of the most controversial of the past decades, will not be reopened. Instead, the BGH confirmed the verdict of the Magdeburg district court: A former police service group leader is therefore guilty of negligent homicide and must pay a fine of 10,800 euros.
Jallow had died under mysterious circumstances nearly ten years ago. Handcuffed on hands and feet, the then 36-year-old asylum seeker burned in a Dessau police cell, fixed back on a mattress with a flame-retardant cover made of imitation leather.
Twice tried courts already to clarify the case; Until last there were various contradictions and ambiguities. Friends Jallows doubt primarily the thesis that the Sierra Leoner should have set his own mattress - heavily alcoholized and with a cheap lighter that appeared only days after the incident with the evidence.
Case already negotiated twice
From the accusation of bodily harm resulting in death, a former police department head was acquitted in December 2008. This judgment was overturned by the BGH in 2010; in the Magdeburg district court, the case was re-negotiated. Result this time: Due to negligence in its monitoring obligations, the judges guilty of the officials of the negligent homicide and imposed a fine of 10,800 euros. Both the defense attorney and prosecutor and co-plaintiffs filed against it.
There is no doubt that in 2005 in Dessau "a giant sloppiness happened, which can not be and can not be," Federal prosecutor Johann Schmid said before the verdict. Before the BGH, however, it was all about the question of whether the Magdeburg judgment was made incorrectly.
Similarly, the chairman Judge Beate Sost-Scheible also expressed. "The tragic death quite rightly moves the public and leaves behind bewilderment and perplexity," she said at the beginning of the verdict. But the expectations of the public should "not be a yardstick for the decision-making of a court".
"Comprehensive Evidence" on 67 negotiation days
The district court of Magdeburg after the abolition of the first acquittal by the district court Dessau on 67 hearing days made a comprehensive evidence. There were no legal errors in the assessment of the evidence. This also applies to the determination of the cause of the fire, said Sost-Scheible.
Jallow was taken into police custody on January 7, 2005 after two female cleaners in a Dessau park had been harassed by him. When the 36-year-old refused to show his ID to the called officials, they took him to the police station. Allegedly on the advice of a doctor, the police locked Jallow in a cell and fixed him there on his hands and feet.
When the fire broke out, the then service group leader is said to have turned off the fire alarm twice without getting to the bottom of it. When he finally opened the cell, Jallow had already been dead.
After several investigations into the fire, a coalition of supporters of Jallow last November issued its own fire assessment. The suspicion was suggested that an unknown offender had gained access to the cell and lit the mattress there.