Death of a young refugee - police officers on trial

Process - Death of a young refugee - police officers on trial

As they step in front of the court, the five accused police officers hide their faces behind gray file covers from the many cameras and spectators. At the start of the trial for the fatal police shooting of a young refugee in Dortmund a year and a half ago, the courtroom at Dortmund District Court is filled to capacity.

There is great interest in the criminal investigation into an operation in which, according to the public prosecutor's office, hardly anything was proportionate.

The defendants follow the reading of the accusations against them largely with their eyes downcast. In August 2022, Mouhamed Dramé, who was originally from Senegal, was shot with five shots from a police officer's submachine gun - without the investigator being able to identify any danger to the officers or third parties.

Five of the six projectiles fired from the MP5 weapon hit the teenager, who died shortly afterwards in hospital. Chief public prosecutor Carsten Dombert has now charged the shooter with manslaughter. Two female colleagues and one male colleague aged 29 to 34 have been charged with dangerous bodily harm in the line of duty, and the 55-year-old head of operations has been charged with incitement to do so.

Operation in a youth welfare facility

According to the indictment, the police were called to a youth welfare facility because the 16-year-old was apparently handling a knife with suicidal intent. When the emergency services arrived, he was calmly leaning against a wall in an inner courtyard, bent forward and pointing a household knife at his stomach.

When he did not react to a brief approach, a female officer is said to have sprayed him with pepper spray on the orders of her superior and without warning. She directed the spray bottle at the teenager for six seconds until the irritant gas ran down his face.

When he then stood up and moved towards the officers - the knife still in his hand - he was allegedly first shot at with Taser stun grenades before shots were fired from the submachine gun less than a second later.

At no point was Dramé "asked to put down the knife", according to senior public prosecutor Dombert. He emphasized that the use of pepper spray, Tasers and the submachine gun was without justification. The five shots hit the teenager in the leg, stomach, shoulder, face and forearm.

Of the defendants' lawyers, only the shooter's lawyer, Christoph Krekeler, made a brief statement on the first day of the trial. His client and his family are "very burdened" by the trial. Dramé had lost his life because of him - the shooter. When Dramé stood up and approached the police officer with a knife, it was not only his client who felt this was threatening, said Krekeler, referring to the almost simultaneous use of the Taser by his colleagues. "In this situation, the color of Mouhamed Dramé's skin didn't matter to my client at all," he emphasized.

The death of the underage refugee from Senegal had caused nationwide outrage and debates about the proportionality of the means used by the police. Racist motives were also discussed.

Protest against police violence

A small group of demonstrators protest against police violence in the drizzle outside the district court at the start of the trial. They held up cardboard boxes with Mouhamed's likeness. They want the case to be clarified and justice to be served, says William Dountio from the Justice4Mouhamed solidarity group, which is in close contact with the family. "They want answers to the question of why they had to lose Mouhamed in such a traumatic way. The trial now is a first step towards getting these answers," says Dountio.

The family will also be represented in court by criminal defense lawyer and criminologist Thomas Feltes. He also hopes that the trial will send out a signal: politicians and the police should rethink their strategy for dealing with people in exceptional situations, he says on the sidelines of the trial. He is aware that the police are confronted with thousands of such operations and that they usually handle them well. "But there are always escalating situations in which the wrong decisions are made." In his view, this was also the case in Dortmund: "Mouhamed couldn't escape. There is no reason for me to turn this stable situation into an unstable one by using pepper spray," says Feltes. Pepper spray increases aggression instead of reducing it.

So far, ten further trial days have been scheduled until April. The trial will continue on January 10, 2024.