Death of Oury Jalloh: New report confirms old doubts

Almost 17 years after the death of the asylum seeker Oury Jalloh in a police cell in Dessau, an initiative wants to prove with another fire test and a film that Jalloh was set on fire and murdered. For this purpose, the situation in the police cell was recreated on January 7, 2005 by a commissioned British fire protection expert and the fire was filmed, as the initiative explained in a press conference on Wednesday. Fire protection expert Iain Peck said he believed the results showed that it was most likely that Jalloh was doused with a liquid such as gasoline and ignited.

The "Initiative in memory of Oury Jalloh" has accused the police and the public prosecutor's office for years of preventing the death from being investigated.

She calls for new trials against the police officers.

A complaint is currently being prepared against the public prosecutor's office in Saxony-Anhalt for obstruction of punishment in office, said Nadine Saeed from the initiative.

“We are unable to force the prosecutor to do anything.

We hope for the public and the public pressure. "

True to the original simulation of the fact

The attorney general in Naumburg announced that the current report had not yet been sent to her. If it is "new evidence that is suitable to establish sufficient suspicion against a specific person, the investigation could (then) be restarted". In previous fire reports commissioned by the initiative in 2013 and 2015, this was not the case.

For the report, the expert Peck rebuilt cell 5 in the basement of the Dessau police station true to the original. The only difference: the fourth wall of the otherwise completely tiled cell was made of fire-proof glass for video documentation. With a dummy made of pieces of pig and pig skin in the body dimensions of Jalloh, the fire expert simulated the processes on January 7, 2005 in real time. The official version of the authorities, according to which the then 36-year-old Jalloh is said to have set himself on fire, tied hand and foot to a fire-resistant mattress, is therefore unlikely.

According to Peck, several fire tests carried out in this way were unsuccessful and did not reproduce the fire image of the cell at that time that was captured in photos. It was only when Peck poured 2.5 liters of gasoline over the dummy and set the body on fire that a picture of comparable fire damage emerged. In addition, attempts to move with a person fixed at four points on a full-size mattress had shown that Jalloh had neither the freedom of movement nor other options to light the mattress himself, said Peck.

Other fire experts, doctors and criminologists had come to the same conclusion in recent years.

In addition, a forensic report by the Frankfurt radiologist Boris Bodelle in 2019 came to the conclusion that Jalloh was badly mistreated before his death.

With the new fire report "we want to increase the facts and evidence and increase public pressure," said Nadine Saeed from the initiative.

Numerous mistakes by the police and other authorities

The African asylum seeker Jalloh was drunk and drugged when he died lying on a mattress in his cell.

It is still unclear whether he lit the mattress himself.

The exact circumstances of the death could not be clarified in two trials.

One police officer was convicted in 2012 for failing to ensure that Jalloh was properly supervised.

Two special investigators found numerous errors by the police and other authorities in a 300-page investigation report.

The left-wing politician in Saxony-Anhalt, Henriette Quade, said on Twitter on Wednesday that the new report had to be "taken seriously".

The claim that Jalloh set himself on fire has not yet been proven.

"With this report, it is definitely not possible to keep it," said Quade.

The Public Prosecutor's Office in Naumburg pointed out that the investigation had been discontinued in November 2018 "because there were no verifiable indications that could exclude an inflammation of the mattress" by Jalloh and "that prove an inflammation by police officers or certain third parties".

A counter-motion by the Jallohs family had been rejected by the Higher Regional Court because there was insufficient suspicion.

In the investigation report of the special investigators of the state parliament of 2020, the attitude was described as "very well understandable and, in view of the evidence, factually and legally correct".