Oury Jalloh was unlawfully arrested, unlawfully detained and shackled, unlawfully blood drawn, tortured, killed and burned to death by police officers of the Dessau police station on January 7, 2005. In the course of the independent investigation by the Initiative in Remembrance of Oury Jalloh, two other homicide crimes committed by the Dessau police also came to public attention:

• On December 7, 1997, Hans-Jürgen Rose was severely brutalized at the Dessau police station and subsequently dumped in front of a house entrance in the close neighborhood – he succumbed to his severe internal injuries only a few hours later on December 8, 1997
• On October 29, 2002, Mario Bichtemann was illegally taken into custody by Dessau police officers and „found“ dead the next day in custody cell no. 5 with a fractured skull base and a fatal brain hemorrhage.

To this day, law enforcement agencies, courts, and state politicians refuse to acknowledge these crimes and draw appropriate criminal consequences. The crimes have remained allegedly „unsolved“, unatoned, without official apologies and without compensation until today!

The brutal, racist murder of brother Oury Jalloh will now be 18 years ago on January 7, 2023.

In the face of the dehumanizing series of murders in the Dessau police station and their systematic impunity, we call on all people and especially our Black and migrant communities to join us in the commemoration demonstration in Dessau to remember those who died and were humiliated in the Dessau murder house, to demand official acknowledgement of the crimes and appropriate prosecution.

The murder, the burning and the previous torture of Oury Jalloh have long been extensively and scientifically proven by a large number of forensic reports – what is missing is the constitutional recognition of the facts and respective consequences.

For 18 years, public prosecutors, courts, and political leaders have sabotaged the investigation ex officio through untenable hypotheses, through systematic suppression and destruction of evidence, through purposeful manipulation of expert opinions and their results, and through deliberate restriction of the lines of investigation and charges.

The Initiative in Remembrance of Oury Jalloh, on the other hand, has impressively demonstrated in these 18 years, on the basis of fire reports, file reports, medical reports and forensic reconstructions, that

• Oury Jalloh did not have a lighter and the alleged „evidence“ could not have been on death row
• Oury Jalloh must have been at least incapacitated or unconscious or even already dead at the time of the setting of the fire, since neither fire gases in his blood nor stress factors in his urine were detectable
• Oury Jalloh received severe head injuries and rib fractures shortly before his death
• setting fire to the fireproof mattress without accelerant could not be successful from the point of view of fire physics
• the fire pattern from cell no. 5 could not be achieved without the use of fire accelerant – and
• that the cell door must probably have been open for the entire duration of the fire.

On Thursday, December 22, 2022, we therefore cordially invite you to an information event together with the Initiative in Remembrance of Oury Jalloh at the International Center B5 (Brigittenstraße 5, 20359 Hamburg-St. Pauli) to inform you about the current state of affairs, to answer your questions and to organize our joint journey to Dessau.

No JUSTICE – No PEACE

Touch ONE – Touch ALL

BREAK the SILENCE

2 years ago Brother Tonou Mbobda was murdered in the UKE-Hospital…

Since 2 years the UKE-Hospital has been disclaiming its responsibility for his violent death…

Since 2 years now, Hamburg’s public prosecutors have failed to adequately prosecute the obvious breaches of law, breaches of due diligence, and violations of policy….

Since 2 years now, the institution UKE-Hospital, the prosecuting authority public prosecutor’s office and the political leaders in the science committee have allied for a joint cover-up by stigmatizing, criminalizing and blaming the victim…

Since 2 years now, we as the Black Community Coalition for Justice & Self-Defense have been fighting together with the family and the Black Community Hamburg for the full and complete clarification of all circumstances that led to the violent death of Brother Tonou Mbobda… and we will not let this fight rest until the family receives the justice it deserves. The death of Brother Tonou Mbobda cannot and must not go unpunished and unpardoned!

We demand the indictment of those responsible in a due process of law to clarify all outstanding issues:

• Why was Tonou Mbobda’s cardiac muscle thickening not precautionarily clarified and diagnosed by a specialist cardiologist despite multiple conspicuous and pathologically marked ECG findings and despite the additional prescription of drugs with side effects on his heart?
• Why was the low potassium level determined by laboratory chemistry on admission not actively compensated, when it is known that low potassium levels can promote the occurrence of dangerous cardiac arrhythmias, especially in combination with the medication administered?
• How can it be that both the responsible physician and subsequently also the public prosecutor’s office and the attorney general’s office establish an alleged danger to others, although Tonou Mbobda never attacked or injured anyone in his entire lifetime, throughout his mental history and not on the day of his death?
• Why can the responsible physician have ordered the security service and not exercise medical supervision to ensure compliance with existing professional guidelines when they subsequently use physical force, and thus allow the security service to employ unprofessional and life-threatening techniques of violence against a patient, for which there was not even legal order issued yet?
• How can it be that the public prosecutor in charge commissions the contract for the forensic medical examination to the UKE-Hospital itself?
• Why was there no immediate forensic medical examination carried out to determine and document the injuries and consequences of the use of violent force despite the immediate police investigation and the explicit indication by a medical representative of the Black Community? Against forensic standards of investigation injuries were only documented 5 days later in the course of the autopsy.
• Why is a possible positional asphyxia (circulatory collapse in prone position with hands tied behind the back and additional respiratory restriction due to sitting up/kneeling of several persons) neither mentioned nor discussed in the autopsy report of Prof. Püschel, and how does the responsible public prosecutor Mahnke come to claim a completely unscientific „minimum exposure time“ of 25 minutes as a “condition” for such an event in front the scientific committee of parliament?
• How does the responsible public prosecutor Ogiermann of the Attorney General’s Office come to construct an allegedly avertable self-endangerment by a theoretically possible traffic accident, when there is no evidence at all for the necessary intention of the patient Tonou Mbobda to leave the clinic premises in the first place?
• How can the violations against the PsychKG Hamburg (missing legal basis), against the S3 guideline „To prevent coercion“, against the medical duty of care (omission of diagnosis and therapy of significant concomitant diseases) and against the right of self-determination of patients have been appropriately processed, if both the public prosecutor’s offices and the scientific committee prevent their clarification and naming by an irresponsible perpetrator-victim reversal, by criminalizing the person killed with the help of the protective claims of those actually responsible for the fatality and imputing a cynical „life-saving intention“ to the perpetrators of the violence, for which there is neither professional nor actual evidence?

Neither the UKE-Hospital, nor the city of Hamburg have so far personally apologized to the family or expressed their regrets to the bereaved.

The killing of Black people is part of the structural DNA of Hamburg, if only because the responsible law enforcement agencies have so far systematically legitimized it instead of filing charges. The „failure to recognize“ implicitly and explicitly racist behavior not only through unjustified and excessive violence, but also through failure to care and ignoring fundamental rights is an unspeakable continuity that feeds on the unreflective colonial roots of the German dominant society. It is an expression of an inhuman superiority mentality that the recognition of equal rights to life and self-determination is and can still be so systematically denied in 2021. We will not continue to stand idly by and watch the killing of Black lives and institutional violence against Black people in impunity, but we will do everything necessary to ensure that anti-Black racism in Hamburg, in Germany and beyond finally comes to an end!

Touch One – Touch ALL

Justice for Mbobda

Black Community Coalition for Justice & Self-Defense

Contact: [email protected]

Join: [email protected]