Enlarge image
Flowers and candles at the place of arrest in the Delmenhorster wool park
Photo: Sina Schuldt / dpa
The public prosecutor's office in Oldenburg has closed the investigation against police officers in the case of a young man from Iraq who died after being checked in the Delmenhorster wool park.
The 19-year-old's family had brought criminal charges against the accused.
Her suspicion: Qosay K. may have died as a result of an excessively violent police operation.
There was talk of police violence and racism in social networks and at demos. The case has been compared to the death of African American George Floyd a year ago in Minneapolis. "I can't breathe," Floyd had called when a cop sat on his neck for minutes. Floyd died.
According to prosecutors, forensic doctors discovered Qosay K. polyacrylamide and sodium polyacrylate in the body's stomach and intestinal tract.
The substances can bind many times their own mass in water and other liquids.
As superabsorbents, they are used in baby diapers, among other things.
The chemicals are responsible for serious damage to the digestive tract of the deceased.
The public prosecutor said in a statement that it was still unclear whether the consumption of the substance caused the 19-year-old's death.
But it is likely that it was related to death.
Why Qosay K. swallowed the powder and whether he knew what it was about is unclear.
Presumably he had taken it in wrapped up.
According to a forensic medical report, he died of multiple organ failure.
Escape after routine control in the wool park
Qosay K. fled Iraq to Germany as a minor in 2015.
On March 5th, he met a friend in the wool park, a social hotspot near the Delmenhorster train station.
The two sat on a park bench and smoked a joint.
At around 6:30 p.m., two plainclothes police officers came up to them and tried to check the men.
A routine measure, it seemed at first.
But then Qosay K. fled.
One of the officers persecuted and finally caught up with him.
Qosay K. is said to have struggled and hit the officer in the head.
The policeman is said to have used pepper spray.
Together with his colleague, he overpowered the 19-year-old. The police kept his hands behind his back. An ambulance was routinely called because the officer had used pepper spray during the operation. The police took Qosay K. to the Delmenhorst police station for a blood test. There it collapsed around 7.45 p.m. Ten minutes later an ambulance was on site. Qosay K. fell into a coma and was taken to the hospital, where he died the next day. The police spoke of a "tragic accident".
But was the young Iraqi's death really an accident?
Or did Qosay K. die as a result of disproportionately brutal police violence?
In the wool park there were vigils and demonstrations against the actions of the police.
The anger at the allegedly violent police officers unleashed itself on social media.
A photomontage shows them as SS henchmen.
They were insulted as "murderers" and "racists".
A missing tooth and a cut tongue
The public prosecutor's office in Oldenburg did not find any evidence of the use of violence as the cause of the death of the 19-year-old, whose blood contained no drugs other than THC. A report in the NDR magazine "Panorama 3" fueled the thesis of the violent police. Witnesses told reporters that Qosay K., who was handcuffed to his back, screamed. He complained to the police officer that he was having trouble breathing. He also asked for water, which the paramedic who was called refused to do.
After a criminal complaint by the family of Qosay K. against the police officers and the paramedics, the Oldenburg public prosecutor initiated an investigation. A second autopsy seemed to confirm the suspicion of police violence. The tip of the tongue is present separately, quoted the NDR from the forensic medical report that was commissioned by the family. So she "was bitten off," suggested the reporters. In addition, Qosay K. apparently lost a tooth when he was arrested.
In fact, it was a denture that Qosay K. did not lose during the police officers' operation, but that was later removed. The NDR corrected this part of its reporting. But even the tongue is apparently no evidence of police violence. Because Qosay K. hadn't bitten off the piece when he was arrested. It was cut off during the first autopsy of the body for closer examination.
The investigations did not reveal any traces of disproportionately strong police violence.
The Oldenburg Police President Johann Kühme criticized the reporting: “There is no question that police operations can and must be critically questioned by journalists.
Here, however, I got the impression that the story of a German George Floyd case with brutal and racially motivated police officers should definitely be told. "
The tragic death of a 19-year-old man who smoked a joint on a park bench and panicked when the police tried to control him remains in Delmenhorst.
At the police station, Qosay K. was given water.
He was offered to lie down.
Then he fell into a coma from which he never awoke.