DEATH IN CUSTODY – DOCUMENTATION

On March 2, 2026, Sam S., a 35-year-old man from Afghanistan, was found lifeless in his cell at Würzburg Prison. He is believed to have killed himself.

Sam S. was in pretrial detention because he was alleged to have attacked three people with a knife at a Jehovah's Witnesses stand a week earlier. He was initially placed in a communal room at the prison. Because he allegedly provoked other prisoners, he was transferred to the psychiatric ward. A psychiatrist did not recognize any risk of suicide and allowed Sam S. to be placed in a single cell. However, he did not survive this isolation.

www.merkur.de

www.t-online.de

A 40-year-old man suddenly died in the courtroom of the Oldenburg District Court. Police officers had picked up the man from his apartment to execute an arrest warrant and brought him to a judge. The autopsy found no evidence of violence, and toxicological evaluations are pending.

om-online.de

On December 26, 2025, a patient was shot and killed by police at the psychiatric ward of the University Hospital in Giessen. His name is currently unknown to us. He was 33 years old.

The man had been in a closed ward and was in a severe state of mental distress. According to the investigating public prosecutor's office, he allegedly threatened hospital staff with a “check card knife.” The staff then made an emergency call. The police officers who responded initially used a taser on the man, and then shot him twice. One shot hit him in the leg, while the other struck him in the upper body.

To commemorate this incident, a demonstration against police violence was held in front of the hospital just a few days later. Speeches highlighted that such deaths could have been prevented, pointing out that police officers are not sufficiently trained to de-escalate situations involving people in mental health crises. The demonstrators called for “specialized crisis intervention teams instead of armed escalation” and for “a healthcare system that intervenes before situations escalate.”

www.giessener-anzeiger.de

On December 11, 2025, the apartment of a 31-year-old man from Wuppertal was searched by the police. The resident apparently resisted and slightly injured a police officer, whereupon he was apparently detained. He broke free and went onto the balcony, from which he jumped. As the apartment was on the 4th floor, he died from his injuries. The police called the death a “suicide by the 31-year-old man” and did not provide any further information. “No further information will be provided,” they concluded. The investigating Hagen police and the public prosecutor's office say that there was no misconduct on the part of the officers. It is also not known why the 31-year-old's apartment was searched.

wa.de

In response to a request from FragDenStaat, the Ministry of the Interior of North Rhine-Westphalia stated that in December 2025, a person died during a police operation in Cologne. The circumstances are not further described, and the cause of death is given as “death of the deceased person by suicide.” No further details are known or available.

FragDenStaat-Anfrage

In response to a request from FragDenStaat, the Ministry of the Interior of North Rhine-Westphalia stated that in December 2025, a person died during a police operation in Soest. The circumstances are not further described, and the cause of death is given as “death of the deceased person by suicide.” No further details are known or available.

FragDenStaat-Anfrage

On October 3, 2025, a 32-year-old man died in Uelzen Prison. We do not know his name.

The man was imprisoned because he had to serve a substitute prison sentence. This means that he had not been sentenced to imprisonment. Rather, he was in prison for the sole reason that he could not pay a fine. The man was arrested by the police just a few days before his death, on September 28. According to the deceased's sister, he was in very poor condition. She said he had been in a coma for several weeks in the summer, had a “long history of drug abuse,” and also suffered from chronic kidney disease. The sister therefore doubts whether her brother was even fit to be imprisoned.

The man's legal guardian reports that he was informed on October 1 that the man was refusing food and drink. On the morning of October 3, prison staff discovered his death. The family was not informed of their relative's death until three days later.

www.az-online.de

On September 28, 2025 a prisoner serving a substitute sentence did not survive his detention in the Cottbus prison. His name is unknown to us. He was 25 years old.

The man had been incarcerated in the Cottbus-Dissenchen prison since September 12, 2025, and was found strangled in his solitary confinement cell on September 28, 2025. He was serving a substitute sentence, meaning he received a fine for an administrative offense that he was unable to pay. Attempts to reassign him were unsuccessful. According to the Ministry of Justice, based on current knowledge, there is no evidence of third-party negligence. Current indications of an increased risk of suicide for the prisoner, whose sentence was already scheduled to end on October 1, 2025, had not been identified prior to the "suicide."

Ministerium der Justiz und für Digitalisierung des Landes Brandenburg

On August 21, 2025, the police were called to an apartment building in Dresden. A 40-year-old man was reported to have thrown objects from the balcony. His name is not known to us. According to a police press release, he allegedly refused to cooperate, so the officers restrained him. He then suddenly required resuscitation. Attempts to revive him failed.

medienservice.sachsen.de

In a request under the Freedom of Information Act, the Federal Ministry of the Interior listed one death in connection with a police operation on August 12, 2025. No further information is currently available or has been provided by the ministry or the police.

FragDenStaat-Anfrage

On August 10, 2025, a fatal police operation took place in the Nippes district of Cologne, resulting in the death of a man.He was 52 years old. We do not know his name.

The man is said to have been in a state of mental distress. The police say they “restrained” him in order to take him to an ambulance for examination. There, his condition suddenly deteriorated. The man was taken to a hospital under resuscitation measures, where he ultimately died.

www.ksta.de, FragDenStaat-Anfrage

Nelson died by “suicide” in Ottweiler Prison on August 1, 2025. He was 15 years old. According to reports, Nelson was in prison on the basis of a so-called preventive detention order. Before his death, he was held in solitary confinement there for five weeks for unknown reasons. He is also said to have been starving and beaten and kicked by guards. He then allegedly killed himself in his cell.

On August 2, one day after Nelson's death, 17 prisoners refused to return to their cells after free time as a protest. The prison called in a special police task force to quell the uprising. Preliminary proceedings were initiated against two prison officers for assault in their duties.

According to the "Saarbrücker Zeitung", the autopsy found no evidence of any external influence. However, Nelson's father reported that he could barely recognize his dead son's face because it had been disfigured by violence. Further investigation is being hampered by the fact that Nelson's body was cremated without his family being notified.

www.sr.de, www.nd-aktuell.de

During the night of July 21-22, 2025, a 49-year-old man died in Hamburg as a result of a police operation. The man was arrested by the police and taken to the police station because he was alleged to have been vandalizing his apartment. At the station, he is said to have resisted the police, banging his head against the wall and floor. The officers restrained him, at which point he is said to have “suddenly collapsed.” He died shortly afterwards in hospital.

www.zeit.de

On July 19, 2025, a man whose name we do not know was shot dead by police in his apartment in Leonberg near Stuttgart. The 44-year-old is said to have fired indiscriminately at the house opposite and at passersby. No one was injured. The man then allegedly threatened officers from a special task force who had gained access to his apartment with a weapon. They shot him, fatally wounding him. According to the police, the weapon was an alarm pistol.

polizeischuesse.cilip.de

In response to a request from FragDenStaat, the Ministry of the Interior of North Rhine-Westphalia stated that one person died during a police operation in July 2025. The report came from the police in the Hochsauerland district. The circumstances are not further described and the cause of death is given as “other reasons (medical emergency, unknown)”. No further details are known or available.

FragDenStaat-Anfrage

On July 1, 2025, police in Stuttgart shot and killed a 29-year-old man. His name is unknown to us. He was from Algeria. Initially, the police and public prosecutor's office reported that the man who was shot was only 18 years old. However, family members have since presented documents indicating that he was older.

Prior to the fatal police operation, there was reportedly an argument in a restaurant. The man allegedly injured a person of the same age with a sharp object to the throat and then fled. The police were called and pursued him, cornering him in a backyard. An officer fired a shot at him, hitting him in the upper body. The man died at the scene.

According to information from SWR, the officer who fired the fatal shot was not wearing a body camera. Reports indicate that it is unclear why the shot was fired.

polizeischuesse.cilip.de

Bilal K. was shot dead by the police in Wangen (Baden-Württemberg) on June 26, 2025. He was 27 years old.

According to media reports, the Afghan was to be taken into custody. He had been convicted of assault. During the arrest, he is said to have suddenly attacked the officers with a knife. They fired several shots at him. Bilal K. died on the spot.

polizeischuesse.cilip.de

Glorya K. was shot dead by the police in Munich on June 7, 2025. She was 30 years old.

The woman from North Macedonia is said to have attacked several people with a knife at Munich's Theresienwiese, who were slightly injured by the attack. When the police arrived, she is said to have continued “handling” the knife. The police officers then shot her, and she later died in hospital from her serious injuries.

Glorya K. is said to have “rioted” in a grocery store earlier that day. Officers handcuffed her and took her into custody. She was released at around 7:15 p.m. The attack on the Theresienwiese took place shortly afterwards.

polizeischuesse.cilip.de

Rainer Löhnert died on June 4, 2025, in the Bedburg-Hau forensic hospital. Prior to that, he had been incarcerated in various forensic hospitals in North Rhine-Westphalia for more than 38 years. He was imprisoned in 1986 for various physical assaults and property damage.

political-prisoners.net

On May 31, 2025, federal police officers shot and killed a 47-year-old man in Schirnding. We do not know his name. He had driven his car into a border checkpoint. He is said to have fled on foot and fired at the police officers. They returned fire, fatally wounding the man. Resuscitation attempts were unsuccessful. None of the officers were injured. According to the public prosecutor's office, the man who was killed came from Iran and had been living in Mannheim for several years. He had been in Czechia to buy drugs.

polizeischuesse.cilip.de

Sonia Omoroghomwan died on May 28, 2025, in a psychiatric ward in Berlin. Sie died on May 28, 2025. She was 25 years old.

On May 26, 2025, Sonia Omoroghomwan was found unconscious in a bathroom of a closed psychiatric ward of a Berlin hospital. According to the hospital, she hanged herself with a scarf from a shower tube. She died two days later. This version of events is disputed. Family members do not believe that Sonia Omoroghomwan took her own life and assume she was the victim of physical violence. Several anti-racist organizations and Black rights initiatives in Germany are calling for a retrial and an independent investigation by a special commission involving international forensic experts.

tuman.network, africa-live.de

On May 10, 2025 a person died in Berlin while fleeing from the police. He was 27 years old. We don't know his name.

The officers pursued the man with blue lights and sirens because they thought he had stolen a motorcycle. His vehicle crashed into a traffic light pole, throwing him onto the road. He died at the scene of the accident

www.ntv.de

A 31-year-old man, whose name we do not know, was violently brought to the ground and “secured” by police officers in Sande, Friesland, on May 2, 2025. Prior to this, he is said to have been shouting and kicking garbage cans. He is said to have “suddenly collapsed” in an ambulance. The man was initially resuscitated and taken to a hospital, where he died during the night of May 7.

www.sueddeutsche.de

A 71-year-old man, whose name we do not know, threatened his wife on Hölzerstraße at noon on May 5. The authorities later described his condition as a “psychological state of emergency.” The 57-year-old woman fled the apartment and called the police with another person. The 71-year-old did not come out of the apartment, so the emergency services gained access and used a Taser device. The man died after being taken to a hospital as a result of the Taser use.

Südwest Presse

Lorenz A. was shot in the back by police in Oldenburg on the night of April 20, 2025. He was 21 years old.

According to the police, Lorenz A. was denied entry to a nightclub. This reportedly led to an argument, during which Lorenz A. allegedly sprayed tear gas at the security staff. He then fled and was pursued by several people. According to the police, Lorenz A. allegedly threatened his pursuers with a knife, causing them to stop the chase. He is said to have then pocketed the knife and run away.

When Lorenz A. encountered the police in the city center, he initially tried to flee. Later he is said to have attacked the officers with tear gas. A police officer fired several shots at him, three of which, according to the autopsy report, hit him from behind: in the upper body, hip, and head. A fourth shot is reported to have grazed his thigh. Lorenz A. was fatally injured by the gunshots and died shortly afterwards in the hospital. A local coalition is calling for clarification and justice.

www.taz.de, www.instagram.com, www.t-online.de

Emal F. died in the custody of the Hamburg police on April 17, 2025. He was 36 years old.

Emal F. is said to have been in a state of mental distress in his own apartment when the police arrived with several officers. According to media reports, he initially threatened the police with a metal bar, which he threw away when asked to do so. Relatives report that they repeatedly asked to be allowed to calm Emal F. during the police operation. However, the police officers did not respond to this request. Instead, they pushed family members away and overpowered Emal F. with eight to ten officers. The police then forcibly took him to the police station and locked him in a custody cell. There, for unknown reasons, Emal F.'s breathing became so shallow that an emergency doctor had to attend to him. He was taken to hospital, where he died the same day.

The police later stated that Emal F. had lost consciousness due to drug consumption. This could not be confirmed at the autopsy. A parliamentary inquiry revealed that a police officer had previously hit him against the head with his fist for no reason and that it could not be ruled out that this hit was the cause of his death. Emal F. was the father of two children and worked in the care sector. Relatives describe him as a person who was well-liked in the neighborhood.

perspektive-online.net, www.taz.de, www-linksfraktion-hamburg.de

A man was shot dead by the police on April 16, 2025 in Hitzingen (Baden-Württemberg). He was 64 years old.

The man had allegedly used an axe to hit a car with a child inside. The child's mother informed the police. When the 64-year-old man let go of the car, the mother was able to leave with the child unharmed. When the police officers arrived, the 64-year-old is said to have slightly injured a female police officer with an axe. The other police officers then fired shots at the man, killing him on the spot. The State Office of Criminal Investigation is investigating the specific circumstances of the fatal police shooting.

polizeischuesse.cilip.de

Mohamed E. died as a result of a police operation in Dachau on April 16, 2025. He was 29 years old.

The Moroccan citizen was arrested on the morning of April 15 in the center of Dachau and locked up in a custody cell. According to the police, he had been banging on doors and windows while drunk. Residents then called the police. There were communication problems during the arrest due to language barriers. Mohamed E. is said to have tried to evade arrest. He was then pursued by officers, caught up and then handcuffed. Mohamed E. is said to have collapsed in the police cell and was then resuscitated. He died a day later in hospital. The exact causes of death are still unclear. The public prosecutor's office only answered questions vaguely with “heart problems”. But what exactly led to the fatal collapse remains unanswered.

Mohamed E. had last worked in a restaurant. Friends of his said that he was fired shortly before his death. As his employer also gave him his apartment, he also became homeless as a result. Mohamed E. had an Italian residence permit and had come to Germany to work. His family, who still live in Italy, were not informed of Mohamed E.'s death by the police and only found out about it through their own research. Mohamed E. was buried in the small Moroccan town of Khouribga. Although he died alone in the diaspora, many people attended his funeral.

www.taz.de

A man from Syria was shot by Berlin police on April 12, 2025. He succumbed to his injuries the following day. He was 43 years old, we do not know his name.

The man had previously stabbed another man, with whom he had been in an argument, with a kitchen knife in the subway. He then tried to flee, but was stopped by police officers. According to police reports, he also attacked the officers with the knife. One of the police officers then shot the man four times, who later died in hospital.

www.tagesspiegel.de

A 48-year-old man was shot dead by police on April 9, 2025, in the garden of his home in Schramberg. We do not know his name. A neurological clinic had reported the man missing. The police launched a search and found him in his garden. He is said to have pointed a firearm at the officers, whereupon they shot him. The man died at the scene. The weapon was later identified as an alarm pistol.

polizeischuesse.cilip.de

On April 5, 2025, a person died in Rheine as a result of a violent police action. He was 32 years old. His name is not known to us.

According to press reports, the truck driver had fled at high speed from a police patrol that wanted to stop him for a check. He is said to have run several red lights during the escape. When the police finally managed to stop the truck, the driver initially tried to run away again. During the arrest, the officers used a baton and a Taser on him. The man then lost consciousness and stopped breathing. He later died in the hospital.

www.sueddeutsche.de, [Zeit.de](https://www.zeit.de/news/2025-04/06/mann-stirbt-nach-festnahme-obduktion-am-montag]

In response to a request from FragDenStaat, the Ministry of the Interior of North Rhine-Westphalia stated that in April 2025, a person died during a police operation in Cologne. The circumstances are not further described and the cause of death is given as “other reasons (medical emergency, unknown)”. No further details are known or available.

FragDenStaat-Anfrage

The 36-year-old committed femicide on his 39-year-old girlfriend in her apartment and fled. The 36-year-old, who is described as German-Russian, initially fled by car, ramming a parked trailer, and allegedly fled with a knife in his hand. There was a warning shot before officers shot him in the leg and disarmed him. He died in hospital from stab wounds to the chest, which authorities say he inflicted on himself.

Stuttgarter Nachrichten

A man was shot dead by the police in Herne on March 17, 2025. He was 51 years old. We do not know his name.

The police were called by the man's employer because he had not turned up for work. They drove to his home, where he was said to have thrown objects out of the window. When the officers knocked on his door, he allegedly attacked them with a knife. One of the officers then fired four shots at the man. He collapsed and died on the spot. According to reports, the footage from two bodycams that were switched on during the operation is currently being analyzed. The shooter's camera, however, was switched off.

polizeischuesse.cilip.de, FragDenStaat-Anfrage

In Siegburg Prison a person was found dead in his cellon the evening of March 17, 2025. The emergency doctor who was called could only determine that the 28-year-old had died.

The man had only been in the prison since March 11. He had to serve two default imprisonments there. According to the prison warden, he was due to be released after a short time. An investigation was opened to determine the cause of death. There are said to have been no indications that the man was suicidal and he had not left a suicide note.

www.ga.de

Najib Boubaker was shot by the police in front of his house in Dortmund on March 14, 2025 at the age of 70. He was from Tunisia and had German citizenship.

Najib Boubaker, a keen motorcyclist, suffered from health problems. On March 14, he had several epileptic seizures, whereupon a flatmate called an ambulance. Najib Boubaker allegedly refused to be taken to hospital. Allegedly at one point, he reached for a kitchen knife, whereupon the paramedics left the apartment and called the police. According to witnesses, the officers literally surrounded the house. Najib Boubaker is said to have left the house into his front garden with a knife in his hand, whereupon several officers pointed their firearms at him and threatened to use them. There was no warning that pepper spray or a Taser would be used. Najib Boubaker initially retreated into the house, but then came out again and allegedly approached the officers quickly with the knive, whereupon a shot was fired at him. He was hit in the stomach and Najib Boubaker died of his injuries on the spot.

According to the neighborhood, where Najib Boubaker was well known, he was limping, which makes the police's narrative on the speed of the situation appear questionable. The police also referred to Najib Boubaker as a "rioter" in the press release - they did not answer questions from the press as to what they based this narrative on. They also didn't allow acquaintances of Najib Boubaker, who were trying to calm the situation, to talk to him. The bodycams of the officers deployed were switched off without any explanation being given.

www.taz.de, www.nd.de, FragDenStaat-Anfrage

On the morning of March 11, 2025, 61-year-old Markus O. was shot dead by police in Darmstadt. According to reports, a social services employee accompanied by a police patrol came to his apartment to enforce a court order. However, Markus O. did not let the officers into his apartment. Instead, he allegedly pointed a firearm through the open window. The police officers then shot him. He died at the scene.

According to neighbors, Markus O. was unable to cope with the death of his parents, with whom he had previously lived. His mental state deteriorated as a result of their loss.

polizeischuesse.cilip.de, www.bild.de

A man was shot dead by a special police task force in Schönebeck (Saxony-Anhalt) on March 7, 2025. He was 26 years old. We don't know his name, he was from Afghanistan.

According to the police, two emergency calls were received during the night reporting that a man had threatened two other people with a knife in a residential building. The man is also said to have threatened incoming police officers with a knife. They used pepper spray. He then reportedly withdrew to his apartment alone.

The police had the apartment building evacuated and obtained a search warrant. At around five o'clock in the morning, the officers forced their way into the apartment, where the man was still alone at the time without endangering third parties. He is said to have approached the special forces with a knife. They shot him twice and injured him so severely that he later died in hospital. All officers involved in the raid are still on duty.

spiegel.de, www.mdr.de, FragDenStaat-Anfrage

Qabel was shot dead by police in his apartment in Nuremberg on March 4, 2025. The father of two was 38 years old.

The police arrived on the morning of March 4 to execute an arrest warrant against Qabel. The warrant dated from July 2024 and was invalid for several reasons: among other things, it had not been signed by a judge and was based on the false assumption that there was a risk of absconding because Qabel had no fixed abode. It is not yet known why the police shot Qabel. The police claim that he was armed with a kitchen knife and resisted arrest. However, they were unable to provide any concrete details about what this resistance looked like. Officers were not injured.

Qabel worked as a martial arts coach and trained many children and young people. Hundreds of people attended his funeral. The “Justice for Qabel” initiative is fighting for legal clarification. The proceedings initiated by the public prosecutor's office have since been conducted and were discontinued on July 14, 2025.

www.gofundme.com, polizeischuesse.cilip.de

On the night of March 3, a 47-year-old man in Hamm was issued a restraining order. The authorities have not disclosed the reasons or background for this. He was homeless. In order to enforce the restraining order, the police took him into custody. At around 2:30 a.m., officers reported finding him lifeless in his cell. The cause of death could not be determined, but the authorities have ruled out foul play or self-inflicted injury. The police department in Dortmund is investigating “for reasons of neutrality,” but there has been no subsequent reporting on the matter.

WDR.de, SZ.de, FragDenStaat-Anfrage

In response to a request from FragDenStaat, the Ministry of the Interior of North Rhine-Westphalia stated that one person died in March 2025 during a police operation. The circumstances are not further described and the cause of death is stated as “currently unclear,” with the indication that further information will be provided. It is possible that this refers to the death of a 49-year-old Cameroonian man in Düsseldorf in March 2025, who died at the scene of the incident. However, this is only a guess.

FragDenStaat-Anfrage

On the evening of February 16, 2025, a 48-year-old man was shot dead by police in Eichstätten. We do not know his name. His wife had called the police because the man had beaten her and their ten-year-old child. According to a police statement, when she locked herself and the child in a room, he continued to rampage through the apartment, tried to kick in the locked door, and allegedly fired a shot at it. This caused the child to suffer a blast trauma. The child was able to escape via a ladder that a neighbor leaned against the outside of the room.

In the meantime, the man went out onto the street with his shotgun. He allegedly ignored police orders to put down the weapon and threatened them with the shotgun. The officers then shot him. The man died in hospital despite emergency surgery.

Note: We oppose any trivialization or justification of patriarchal violence. The fact that we also include the deaths of possible perpetrators in our chronicle does not mean that we approve of their previous behavior. The decisive factor for inclusion in our statistics is whether the circumstances of death fall within our research criteria.

polizeischuesse.cilip.de

A person died by “suicide” in Heidering Prison on February 12, 2025. We do not know his name or his age. He is said to have been in the “bunker” several times before his death due to his known suicidal tendencies.

Bericht eines Mitgefangenen, E-Mail der Gefängnisleitung

A man was shot by the police in Bruchsal on January 13, 2025. He was 48 years old. We do not know his name or any further information about his identity.

On that day, the man was to be forcibly taken to a psychiatric hospital. He did not respond to the police ringing the doorbell or knocking, whereupon the front door was opened from the outside. According to the officers, the man allegedly attacked them "immediately" with a knife and a meat cleaver. The officers unleashed a police dog on him and shot him. He died on the spot.

polizeischuesse.cilip.de

Zeit, BR

WDR, WAZ

Cilip

Cilip

Tagesschau

We commemorate Fethullah Aslan, who died in the psychiatric department of a Berlin hospital on November 25, 2024. He was 28 years old. According to official accounts, he is said to have committed “suicide”.

The young Kurdish man had fled to Germany from Turkey to escape political persecution and torture. However, the German authorities rejected his asylum application. When he was asked to sign a “voluntary return” document to Turkey at the BAMF, he collapsed. The asylum authorities informed the police, who handcuffed him and took him to a nearby hospital. There he was sedated with medication and transferred to a psychiatric ward.

To protest against his impending deportation, Fethullah Aslan began a hunger strike. On November 25, he was found dead in the psychiatric facility. He is said to have pulled a bag over his head and suffocated himself in this way. However, this account raises many questions: according to a newspaper report, Fethullah Aslan was under round-the-clock surveillance by cameras and security guards. It is unclear why his “suicide” was not noticed. Fethullah Aslan's uncle was still in contact with his nephew during the hunger strike and describes him as very combative. He has great doubts about the suicide theory.

www.firatnews.com, www.instagram.com, www.nd-aktuell.de

We commemorate a man who was shot dead by the police in Kamp-Lintfort on November 23, 2024. He was 34 years old. We do not know his name.

The police arrived that evening because of a reported disturbance. The man, who was later shot dead, is said to have been “rioting” on his balcony, among other things. The officers who were called found him in the stairwell, where he is said to have threatened them with a bunch of keys. A scuffle is said to have broken out, during which the officers fired six shots. Three of them hit the man. He later succumbed to his injuries.

www.nrz.de

T-Online

RP Online, NDR

SWR, SWR

Cilip

SWR, Stimme

Cilip

Cilip

Blaulichtreport-Saarland

Cilip

[Frag den Staat - Link leider nicht mehr verfügbar]

[Frag den Staat - Link leider nicht mehr verfügbar]

Volksstimme

Tagesschau

WA

Polizei Berlin

Tag24

WA

Sueddeutsche

SWR

We commemorate U. Z., who died in a cell fire in Heidering Prison on July 19, 2024. He was 29 years old. He would probably have had to remain in prison until 2026.

According to press reports, the sirens of the fire alarm system in the prison sounded at around 1:15 a.m. that night because a cell was on fire. Rescue workers are said to have arrived a few minutes later and started fire-fighting work. However, all help came too late for U. Z., and an emergency doctor who was called could only determine his death. Eyewitnesses reported that they had seen the desperate man at the window when there was already a fire in his cell.

It is not yet known how the cell fire started. The Potsdam public prosecutor's office is conducting a death investigation. According to a public prosecutor, there are currently no indications of a homicide. However, there are rumors circulating on social media that prison guards share responsibility for the 29-year-old's death.

www.maz-online.de, www.instagram.com, www.jungewelt.de

We commemorate Mohammad Z. who was shot dead by police in Pegnitz near Nuremberg on June 30, 2024. He was 34 years old and had Iranian citizenship. We do not know his name.

Mohammad Z. is said to have attacked a Federal Police patrol car by banging on the door from the outside. When the officers got out, he is said to have attacked them with a knife. According to the officers, they first used pepper spray. When this had no effect, a female officer reportedly shot first into the air and then at the man. He died at the scene of the incident.

www.spiegel.de, www.welt.de, www.jungewelt.de

We commemorate a Polish prisoner who officially died by "suicide" on June 19, 2024 in the Wolfenbüttel correctional facility. He was 35 years old. We do not know his name.

Although it was known that the man was a danger to himself, he was housed alone in a specially secured cell. This isolation is not recommended for people in crisis. Instead, they should be housed in clinical facilities. Psychological or psychiatric treatment was apparently not available to the prisoner in the prison.

Although the cell is under continuous video surveillance, the prison staff did not discover the fatal strangulation until it was already too late.

www.taz.de

NDR

We commemorate a man from Afghanistan who was shot dead by police in Wolmirstedt (Saxony-Anhalt) on June 16, 2024. He was 27 years old. We do not know his name.

According to previous reports, the man lived in Stendal and was visiting Wolmirstedt on that day. According to eyewitnesses, he behaved “mentally conspicuously” in the city center during the day. Among other things, he “shouted at cars”.

In the evening, he injured a 23-year-old man with a knife during an argument to such an extent that the man later succumbed to his injuries. He then allegedly threatened several people on an allotment site. He also threatened three people aged 50-75 at a garden party on the occasion of the European Men's Football Championship. The police officers who were then called surrounded the 27-year-old when they arrived. At that moment, he was sitting on the floor and “looked inconspicuous”. The police officers had just considered deploying “special forces” when the man ran towards the officers with a knife. Two police officers fired several shots at him on the grounds that they themselves had been attacked by him and needed to protect themselves. He died shortly afterwards in hospital. The subsequent death investigation initiated by the Magdeburg public prosecutor's office against the two shooters was closed in August 2024 with the result that the police had used firearms lawfully.

spiegel.de

We commemorate Fartoun Haroun Ali, who did not survive the prison conditions in Preungesheim Prison (Frankfurt am Main) on June 15, 2024. She was 36 years old.

Fartoun Haroun Ali fled the civil war in Somalia via Malta and the Netherlands and came to Germany in 2013. According to her mother, she gave birth to a total of nine children. One died after birth, the others were taken away from her by the youth welfare office. In the asylum accommodation where Fartoun Haroun Ali lived, she began a relationship with a man who was also a resident of the facility. She was arrested in a home for vulnerable groups by the police on June 9, 2024. The accusation: she allegedly attacked her partner with a knife.

When she was arrested, she was suspected of having paranoid schizophrenia. Despite this, she was detained and not admitted to a psychiatric ward. She was repeatedly shackled in the prison because she was said to have been aggressive. She reportedly did not eat or drink for days. The restraint, combined with her refusal to drink or eat, led to the formation of thromboses in Fartoun Haroun Ali's body. In hospital, where she was taken twice on the day of her death, embolisms were found in her thigh. Despite this, she was transferred back to the prison, where she died shortly afterwards. Fartoun Haroun Ali's mother is fighting for justice for her daughter together with a lawyer.

www.fr.de

der Westen

Cilip, RBB24

sol, Stern

Esslinger Zeitung

Cilip, Spiegel

We commemorate a person who was found dead in a custody cell at the Steindamm police station in Hamburg on April 16, 2024. We do not know his name. He was 32 years old.

All that is currently known about the case is the account given by the police. According to this, the police had controlled the man from Algeria on the evening of April 15 in the St. Georg district. It was discovered that he had violated a ban on his presence several times. The police therefore took him into custody and locked him into a cell with four other people. St. Georg is considered a so-called danger zone, where the police have extended powers and racial profiling often takes place.

According to the police, the man was to be released from the detention cell the next morning, but was found there dead. Resuscitation attempts were unsuccessful. Nothing is yet known about how the man died. There are said to be no indications of any outside culpability.

www.spiegel.de, www.sueddeutsche.de

Cilip, ND aktuell

[Frag den Staat - Link leider nicht mehr verfügbar]

We commemorate Lamin Touray, who was shot by the police in Niemburg on March 30, 2024. He was 46 years old.

The citizen of Gambia was in an exceptional mental state, so his girlfriend called an ambulance to get medical help - but the police came instead. The 14 police officers present refused the girlfriend's offers to calm Lamin Touray down and instead set a police dog on him. After 45 minutes Lamin Touray was killed with 8 shots after he allegedly injured the police dog with a knife and approached officers.

The police later claimed that Lamin Touray had threatened his girlfriend with a knife, which was often reproduced uncritically in the press. His girlfriend contradicts this: "Instead of helping him, they shot him like an animal in the forest," she said in an interview with Taz.

taz.de(1) taz.de (2)

Cilip

We commemorate a person who was shot dead by the police in in Frankfurt Main on January 30, 2024. He was 40 years old. We do not know his name.

The man with Spanish-Argentinean nationality is said to have attacked two women unknown to him with a knife near the banks of the Main. Three of the four police officers called to the scene then shot the man and seriously injured him. He was taken to hospital, where he died shortly afterwards. He had lived in Frankfurt in a facility for people with mental disabilities.

An uninvolved man was also seriously injured by the police action. According to the public prosecutor's office, he was probably hit by a projectile from a “ricochet”.

www.1730live.de, www.hessenschau.de

[Frag den Staat - Link leider nicht mehr verfügbar]

WDR, Zeit

We remember Ibrahim Bary, who did not survive a police operation on January 6, 2024. He was 26 years old.

The man from Guinea lived in a refugee accommodation, where he allegedly rioted. The security service called the police. Ibrahim Bary is said to have resisted the police operation. Officers fired Tasers twice at Ibrahim Bary, with no apparent effect. During further measures to overpower and arrest the man, he was so badly injured that he lost consciousness and was resuscitated in the ambulance. He died in hospital a short time later.

The investigation into the circumstances of the death was delegated to the Bochum homicide squad as an „independent body”.

Die Zeit

We commemorate Ertekin Özkan, who was shot dead by police on the street in front of his home in Mannheim on December 23, 2023. He was 49 years old.

Ertekin Özkan was apparently in a mental crisis, possibly triggered by the threat of losing his home, where he lived with his mother and his three children. Ertekin Özkan is said to have called the police himself and falsely stated that there was a dead body in his apartment. When the police arrived, he was partially naked on the street, holding a knife with which he had allegedly injured himself.

Several of Ertekin Özkan's family members, including his mother and an uncle, were present and asked the officers to talk to him to calm him down, which had worked well in previous mental crises. This request was refused.

When the police officers asked Ertekin Özkan to put down the knife, he allegedly did not comply and staggered towards the officers, whereupon one officer fired four shots at him. The officers first handcuffed the fatally injured man lying on the floor in front of his relatives before beginning resuscitation.

Ertekin Özkan was taken to hospital, where he died as a result of the gunshot wounds.

polizeischuesse.cilip.de

We commemorate a person from Montenegro who died on the evening of December 2, 2023 as a result of a violent arrest attempt by the police in Berlin-Charlottenburg. We do not know his name.

The 30-year-old, who had been living without a legal status in Berlin, is said to have shouted loudly and damaged bicycles in the courtyard of an apartment building at around 10:30 p.m., which is why residents called the police. He allegedly resisted the officers' attempt to arrest him. According to the police, he suddenly collapsed during the arrest. He was initially resuscitated, but according to media reports, he was diagnosed with a heart attack in hospital.

According to the police investigation report, the police operation was brutal: the officers used "direct coercion in the form of physical force, tools of physical force and batons" against the man. Nevertheless, witnesses who observed the operation claim not to have recognized any police misconduct. The Berlin public prosecutor's office has already closed an investigation on suspicion of involuntary manslaughter.

www.t-online.de, Parliamentary Inquiry at Abgeordnetenhaus

Cilip, NDR

Frag den Staat, MAZ Online

We commemorate a person who died on November 5, 2023 in Cologne as a result of police action. We do not know his name. According to reports, the man was from Croatia. He was 41 years old.

According to the public prosecutor's office, the man is said to have "rioted" in a brothel because his request to pay with a foreign currency was not accepted. The security staff then called the police. The officers broke into the room where the man was located and attacked him with a Taser. Because the man continued to "riot", an emergency doctor is said to have administered a medication to him. He then collapsed and later died in hospital.

www.rundschau-online.de, Frag den Staat, WDR, Spiegel

BNN, SWR

We commemorate a man from Nigeria who fell to his death on October 16, 2023 while fleeing from the police. He was 33 years old. We do not know his name.

The asylum seeker was to be deported to the Netherlands because his asylum procedure was to be carried out there according to the Dublin system. Five police officers visited him in his room on the fifth floor of an apartment building to fetch him for deportation. While he was packing his things, he is said to have suddenly run to the balcony and jumped from there. A police officer reportedly tried to hold him by the arm to prevent him from escaping, but without success. Despite immediate medical intervention, the 33-year-old died on the spot.

www.lvz.de, www.taz.de

We commemorate seven people who died in a car accident while fleeing from police near Ampfing, east of Munich, on October 13, 2023. Those killed were reportedly people from Syria and Turkey, including a six-year-old child. Their names are not known to us.

According to police, in the early morning hours of October 13, federal police officers wanted to control a van on the A 94 highway in southeastern Bavaria. In order to avoid being checked, the driver allegedly accelerated the van strongly and then lost control of the vehicle in a bend. Several people were reportedly thrown out of the van. So far it is unclear how long the police officers chased the vehicle.

In addition to the driver, there were 23 refugees in the van. 16 passengers were injured in the accident, some of them seriously. Police are investigating the driver, who was also injured, for homicide.

www.taz.de

We commemorate seven people who died in a car accident while fleeing from police near Ampfing, east of Munich, on October 13, 2023. Those killed were reportedly people from Syria and Turkey, including a six-year-old child. Their names are not known to us.

According to police, in the early morning hours of October 13, federal police officers wanted to control a van on the A 94 highway in southeastern Bavaria. In order to avoid being checked, the driver allegedly accelerated the van strongly and then lost control of the vehicle in a bend. Several people were reportedly thrown out of the van. So far it is unclear how long the police officers chased the vehicle.

In addition to the driver, there were 23 refugees in the van. 16 passengers were injured in the accident, some of them seriously. Police are investigating the driver, who was also injured, for homicide.

www.taz.de

We commemorate seven people who died in a car accident while fleeing from police near Ampfing, east of Munich, on October 13, 2023. Those killed were reportedly people from Syria and Turkey, including a six-year-old child. Their names are not known to us.

According to police, in the early morning hours of October 13, federal police officers wanted to control a van on the A 94 highway in southeastern Bavaria. In order to avoid being checked, the driver allegedly accelerated the van strongly and then lost control of the vehicle in a bend. Several people were reportedly thrown out of the van. So far it is unclear how long the police officers chased the vehicle.

In addition to the driver, there were 23 refugees in the van. 16 passengers were injured in the accident, some of them seriously. Police are investigating the driver, who was also injured, for homicide.

www.taz.de

We commemorate seven people who died in a car accident while fleeing from police near Ampfing, east of Munich, on October 13, 2023. Those killed were reportedly people from Syria and Turkey, including a six-year-old child. Their names are not known to us.

According to police, in the early morning hours of October 13, federal police officers wanted to control a van on the A 94 highway in southeastern Bavaria. In order to avoid being checked, the driver allegedly accelerated the van strongly and then lost control of the vehicle in a bend. Several people were reportedly thrown out of the van. So far it is unclear how long the police officers chased the vehicle.

In addition to the driver, there were 23 refugees in the van. 16 passengers were injured in the accident, some of them seriously. Police are investigating the driver, who was also injured, for homicide.

www.taz.de

We commemorate seven people who died in a car accident while fleeing from police near Ampfing, east of Munich, on October 13, 2023. Those killed were reportedly people from Syria and Turkey, including a six-year-old child. Their names are not known to us.

According to police, in the early morning hours of October 13, federal police officers wanted to control a van on the A 94 highway in southeastern Bavaria. In order to avoid being checked, the driver allegedly accelerated the van strongly and then lost control of the vehicle in a bend. Several people were reportedly thrown out of the van. So far it is unclear how long the police officers chased the vehicle.

In addition to the driver, there were 23 refugees in the van. 16 passengers were injured in the accident, some of them seriously. Police are investigating the driver, who was also injured, for homicide.

www.taz.de

We commemorate seven people who died in a car accident while fleeing from police near Ampfing, east of Munich, on October 13, 2023. Those killed were reportedly people from Syria and Turkey, including a six-year-old child. Their names are not known to us.

According to police, in the early morning hours of October 13, federal police officers wanted to control a van on the A 94 highway in southeastern Bavaria. In order to avoid being checked, the driver allegedly accelerated the van strongly and then lost control of the vehicle in a bend. Several people were reportedly thrown out of the van. So far it is unclear how long the police officers chased the vehicle.

In addition to the driver, there were 23 refugees in the van. 16 passengers were injured in the accident, some of them seriously. Police are investigating the driver, who was also injured, for homicide.

www.taz.de

We commemorate seven people who died in a car accident while fleeing from police near Ampfing, east of Munich, on October 13, 2023. Those killed were reportedly people from Syria and Turkey, including a six-year-old child. Their names are not known to us.

According to police, in the early morning hours of October 13, federal police officers wanted to control a van on the A 94 highway in southeastern Bavaria. In order to avoid being checked, the driver allegedly accelerated the van strongly and then lost control of the vehicle in a bend. Several people were reportedly thrown out of the van. So far it is unclear how long the police officers chased the vehicle.

In addition to the driver, there were 23 refugees in the van. 16 passengers were injured in the accident, some of them seriously. Police are investigating the driver, who was also injured, for homicide.

www.taz.de

RBB24

CIlip, Frag den Staat, Focus

Frag den Staat

NDR, T-Online, RTL

We commemorate a person who died in the deportation detention center in Büren on September 14, 2023. He was 24 years old. We do not know his name, nor do we know anything more about his life or the circumstances of his detention.

According to the district government, the man was found lifeless in his cell on the morning of September 14. The staff reportedly tried to resuscitate him and an emergency doctor continued the resuscitation. But it remained unsuccessful.

There were reportedly no indications of either a "suicide" or of any third-party involvement. The police have opened a so-called death investigation.

www.radiohochstift.de

Frag den Staat

We commemorate Gizo Brigvadze, who died in Tegel Prison on August 23, 2023. He was 26 years old.

We know almost nothing about his life, the reasons for his imprisonment and the circumstances of his death. In an obituary in the prisoner newspaper Lichtblick, Gizo Brigvadze is described as a person who loved his family, sport and freedom. It also states that he should have been released three months after his death.

Lichtblick Ausgabe 1/2023

Frag den Staat, RP Online, T-Online

Frag den Staat, RP Online, RP Online

Morgenpost

We commemorate a woman from Turkey who died in a car accident near Pirna in Saxony on July 13, 2023 while fleeing from the police. She was 44 years old, we do not know her name.

According to the federal police, officers wanted to check a van on the morning of 13 July on the highway 17 near Pirna. The driver reportedly accelerated sharply to evade the control. As a result, the van left the road and overturned.

In addition to the deceased woman, there were seven other refugees in the vehicle, some of whom were seriously injured. The driver also had to be taken to hospital with injuries. The Dresden public prosecutor's office has since brought charges against him and one other person. They are accused of illegally bringing people to Germany without a visa in exchange for money.

www.lvz.de

ND aktuell, Youtube

We commemorate a Polish man who died on July 7th, 2023 while fleeing the police near Cottbus. He was 39 years old.

The police wanted to control the driver of the Mercedes S-Class car on Autobahn 15 near Cottbus around 4am. The driver evaded this control and the police started a car chase. This chase ended on highway 115 on Eilandweg in Bad Muskau near Cottbus. The car overturned in the Eiland roundabout. The driver was trapped and was retrieved by firefighters. He succumbed to his injuries.

www.diesachsen.de

Zeit, MDR

We commemorate a man who was shot and killed by police in Ingolstadt on June 5, 2023. He was 35 years old. His name is not known to us.

The man is said to have been walking around on railroad tracks while naked and in a state of mental crisis when the police arrived. According to the police, he threatened to jump off a bridge several times. Thereupon, there were long negotiations with him with the aim of bringing the man to a "medical measure". In addition to the police, a special task force (SEK) and a colleague of the man, there was also an interpreter present to facilitate communication with the 35-year-old Czech.

Eventually, the 35-year-old hid in a bush, from which he later emerged with a piece of wood in his hand. The police then fired gunshots at him. All resuscitation attempts by an emergency physician were unsuccessful; the 35-year-old died of his injuries.

An autopsy will now determine how many shots hit the 35-year-old. The Bavarian State Criminal Police Office is now conducting further investigations to clarify the course of events and the circumstances surrounding the firing of the police shots.

www.sueddeutsche.de

Frag den Staat, Tagesspiegel

Kreiszeitung, Kreiszeitung

t-online

RBB24, BZ Berlin

We commemorate Vitali Novacov, who was violently fixed and suffocated by the police on April 11, 2023. He was 45 years old.

Vitali Novacov was born in Moldova with Bulgarian citizenship and probably Rom, he lived in Niederlehme in Brandenburg and worked as a construction worker.

According to the police report, on the afternoon of April 11, 2023, Vitali Novacov allegedly rioted on a private property in the neighborhood of his apartment, behaving "aggressively" and "psychologically conspicuous." According to the police report, he was overwhelmed by the police with the use of pepper spray and the help of residents and handcuffed. Immediately afterwards, he collapsed, whereupon the restraint was said to have been released and resuscitation began.

In the report of the emergency doctor who was then called in, there is talk of "respiratory arrest in police restraint" and it is noted that the handcuffs were still on when the emergency doctor arrived.

Vitali Novacov was taken to the Neukölln Clinic, and on arrival he is said to have already been brain dead. The CT scan of his head clearly showed the severe effects of prolonged oxygen deprivation. His mouth and nose were smeared with earth, the doctors therefore assume that Vitali Novacov had been pressed with his face into muddy earth for a long time.

In the night of April 12, tests for various drugs were carried out, all of which were negative. In addition, the police came to Vitali Novacov's bed several times, sometimes to bring a bag of medication that allegedly belonged to him, sometimes to confiscate his clothes at the request of the Cottbus public prosecutor's office.

On April 12 at 17:57, the life-support equipment was turned off.

The Berlin public prosecutor's office initiated a death investigation. A first result of the ordered autopsy is that there is no evidence of an external influence that caused the death. The relatives of Vitali Novacov filed a criminal complaint against "unknown" in May 2023. From now on, they are supported by a lawyer. They would also like to have an independent autopsy performed to determine the cause of death. (As of May 12, 2023)

taz.de, anonymous source Neukölln clinic, taz.de

MDR, Sueddeutsche

Ostsee Zeitung, NDR

Cilip, Frag den Staat

ndr.de, taz.de, [Bürgerschaft Hamburg](https://buergerschaft-hh.de/parldok/dokument/82908/tod_einer_frau_nach_einem_poli zeieinsatz.pdf)

We commemorate Denys P., who died by „suicide“ in Tegel Prison on January 23, 2023. He was 23 years old.

In an obituary in the prisoner newspaper Lichtblick, Denys P. is described as a reserved and friendly young man who was passionate about weight training and chess. He was born in Ukraine, but grew up in Germany. As a teenager, he had to serve a prison sentence. After that, he is said to have lived on the streets for some time. He was then convicted of robbery and was imprisoned again, first in Moabit prison, then in Tegel. There he was transferred to the „social therapeutic institution“.

Fellow inmates told a journalist about problems and abuse of power in Tegel Prison. Some of the younger staff acted like „wannabe Rambos“, some of the therapists were „power-hungry“ and „egocentric narcissists“. Denys P. had been severely humiliated a few days before his death. Although it had been known that he was „very shameful“, he had been forced during an unannounced inspection of his detention room to first stand naked, then dressed only in shorts in the cell and then in the cell corridor.

Lichtblick Ausgabe 0/2023

Frag den Staat, polizeischuesse.cilip.de

radioessen.de

We commemorate Mamadou "Johnson" B., who died in custody of the Braunschweig Police Department on January 3, 2023. He was 38 years old.

The police arrested Mamadou "Johnson" B., a Guinean national, at a pub in downtown Braunschweig for allegedly spraying pepper spray. However, three other young men were the aggressors. According to police, a physical altercation ensued at the police station, whereupon the 38-year-old was handcuffed. Johnson had been under the influence of drugs and was therefore medically monitored.

When a blood sample was to be taken from him, the doctor in charge noticed that Mamadou "Johnson" B. had lost consciousness. He had to be resuscitated and was taken to a hospital intensive care unit, where he was eventually declared brain dead and died that same night.

So far, it is unclear what happened to Mamadou "Johnson" B. beforehand. According to an initial autopsy report, no third-party involvement could be determined as the cause of death. However, relatives of the 38-year-old indicate that Johnson's body showed signs of physical abuse and that he had been beaten before his death. In any case, the question arises as to why the police did not immediately take Johnson to a hospital, but left him alone in a custody cell in an intoxicated state.

Gifhorn police are conducting an investigation into the cause of Johnson's death. In this context, toxicological and neuropathological examinations are now pending.

www.braunschweiger-zeitung.de, t-online.de www.news38.de

www.volksstimme.de, www.bild.de

berlin.de, nd-aktuell.de

We commemorate an asylum seeker who, according to the Ministry of the Interior of Lower Saxony, died by "suicide" in Vechta Prison in 2022. We do not know her name. We also do not know anything more about the reason for her detention or the circumstances of her flight to Germany. The person was 32 years old and came from the Middle East region.

www.ari-dok.org

We commemorate a refugee who, according to the Ministry of the Interior of Lower Saxony, died by "suicide" in Sehnde Prison in 2022. We do not know his name. We also do not know the circumstances of his flight to Germany or the reasons for his imprisonment. The refugee was 34 years old and came from a country in Europe.

www.ari-dok.org

Hessenschau

We commemorate a person who died by “suicide” in Halle Prison on December 14, 2022. He was 43 years old and came from Turkey. We do not know his name.

According to a press release from the Ministry of Justice, resuscitation attempts were initiated immediately, but were unsuccessful. An emergency doctor was only able to determine that the man had died.

presse.sachsen-anhalt.de

RND

Sueddeutsche, hessenschau

We commemorate Hikmet T., who died on November 17, 2022 presumably as a result of shots fired by the police in Enger (North Rhine-Westphalia). He was 59 years old.

Hikmet T. is said to have verbally threatened family members on the evening of November 3 and then set fire to his semi-detached house. During this time, his family members are said to have been in the house with him, but they remained unharmed. When the police arrived, he is said to have injured himself with a kitchen knife. He then allegedly approached the police officers. According to the police, Hikmet T. did not respond to repeated attempts to speak to them, after which two officers shot him. He was hit in the leg.

The media initially reported that Hikmet T. was out of mortal danger, but his death was announced on November 17. The police deny that shots were the cause of Hikmet T.'s death. According to a vague statement from a police spokesperson, “various causes” led to his death. It is not known how many shots were fired. There was no independent autopsy.

Note: This is a borderline case. For our research, we generally decided against including cases in which the person killed had previously deliberately endangered the lives of uninvolved third parties. This is likely to be the case here, because Hikmet T. apparently set fire to a house while his relatives were inside. However, they appear to have rescued themselves from the fire independently of the police operation. This is why the case is listed here.

www.sueddeutsche.de, www.nw.de

Zeit.de,

Landtag NRW, Ruhrnachrichten

We commemorate Kupa Ilunga Medard Mutombo, who died on October 6, 2022 in Berlin as a result of violent police action. He was 64 years old.

According to Police information, he was to be transferred from an assisted living home for the mentally ill in Berlin-Spandau to a psychiatric hospital on September 14. At least 14 police officers were involved in the operation. According to Kupa Ilunga Medard Mutombo's guardian, who was also present during the operation, the officers were very violent with him. They fixed the bleeding 64-year-old on the floor with the knee in his neck so that he could not breathe anymore. He had to be resuscitated on the spot and was subsequently admitted comatose to Berlin's Charité University Hospital. He died there three weeks later.

According to the counseling center ReachOut, the brother of the comatose man was not notified by the hospital until seven days after the incident. ReachOut supports the family and demands the immediate suspension of all police officers involved in the operation against Kupa Ilunga Medard Mutombo.

reachoutberlin.de

We commemorate a man who was killed by three shots fired by police in Ansbach on September 8, 2022. He was 30 years old. We do not know his name. According to media reports, the refugee from Afghanistan attacked a 17-year-old student with two kitchen knives near the train station in Ansbach on the evening of September 8. He allegedly brought the teenager to the ground and knelt on him. A 20-year-old passerby allegedly intervened and freed the student. The attacker then fled. The police found the man in a street south of the station. According to the officers, he behaved aggressively and approached them with two knives. They then fired three shots at the man, fatally wounding him. He succumbed to his injuries on the spot. The police chief of Mittelfranken stated shortly after the incident that the shots had been "clearly justified" according to the assessment so far.

www.sueddeutsche.de

Tag24

RP Online

Berliner Zeitung

FragDenStaat

We commemorate Mouhamed Lamine Dramé, who was literally executed by the police with four shots from a machine gun in Dortmund on August 8, 2022.

The 16-year-old had come to Germany from Senegal without his parents. He lived in a housing group for unaccompanied minor refugees in Dortmund's Nordstadt district. He had previously been treated at a psychiatric clinic at his own request.

On August 8, Mouhamed Lamine Dramé was in an acute mental crisis. According to a supervisor, he was allegedly walking around with a knife and holding the blade against his stomach. The supervisor therefore called the police.

Although it was known that the young refugee spoke hardly any German, the officers arrived without an interpreter. Mouhamed Lamine Dramé allegedly did not respond to their shouts. When the police officers attacked him with pepper spray, he allegedly jumped up and approached the officers. The latter escalated the situation further by shooting at him with tasers. One officer then fired six shots at Mouhamed Lamine Dramé with a machine gun. Four of them hit him in the stomach, jaw, forearm and shoulder. He later died during emergency surgery at the hospital.

After the Recklinghausen police initially only investigated Fabian S., the officer who shot and killed Mouhamed Lamine Dramé, the investigation was later expanded to include four other police officers. The investigation then also targeted the officer in charge of the operation and the officers who had attacked Mouhamed Lamine Dramé with pepper spray and Tasers. In February 2023, it was announced that Fabian S. would be charged with manslaughter. Other officers involved in the operation were charged with aggravated assault, and the shift supervisor was charged with incitement to commit aggravated assault. In December 2024, however, after a trial lasting around a year, the five defendants were acquitted on all counts on the grounds of alleged self-defense. One day after the acquittal, Fabian S. was appointed a permanent civil servant.

At the request of the father of the victim, Lamine Dramé, the corpse was transferred to Senegal and buried there. He demands that the circumstances of his son's death be fully investigated.

polizeischuesse.cilip.de, perspektive-online.net, www.nd-aktuell.de

wa.de, t-online

We commemorate Jozef Berditchevski, who was shot by police in the Ostheim district of Cologne on August 3, 2022. He was 48 years old.

Jozef Berditchevski was born in St. Petersburg as the son of a famous Russian violinist and was of Jewish descent. He studied classical music in St. Petersburg for four years. When the first Chechen war began in the 1990s, he fled to Cologne to avoid being drafted into the Russian army. There he continued his studies at the Academy of Music.

For a long time Jozef Berditchevski was a street musician and played with his xylophone in front of the Cologne Philharmonic Hall, among other places. However, the ban on performing at the Corona Lockdown and the resulting loss of his income threw him off track and turned him into an alcoholic.

On August 3, 2022 the musician was to be evicted from his apartment. Because he is said to have announced that he would resist the eviction, the bailiff arrived accompanied by the police. Allegedly, Jozef Berditchevski was armed with a knife and behaved aggressively. The use of pepper spray was "unsuccessful", whereupon the officers opened fire. Two shots hit him in the shoulder and the thigh. The cause of death was determined to be bleeding to death. In early February 2023, the public prosecutor's office in Cologne announced the closing of the investigation against the police officers.

www.labournet.de, twitter.com

We commenmorate Biriq (Amin F.) from Somalia, who was shot in the head by SEK officers in Frankfurt's train station district on August 2, 2022. He was 23 years old. He had been living in Hesse since 2018.

Biriq is said to have threatened two prostitutes with a knife in a hotel room when they did not comply with his wishes. The women were able to get to safety and called the police. Because it was suspected that Biriq had a firearm with him, around 80 SEK officers arrived.

The SEK officers broke down the door of the hotel room and set a police dog on Biriq, even though he was alone at the time and posed no danger to third parties. The dog bit his arm. Police officers then forced their way into the room. Biriq is said to have been holding a knife in his hand. The first police officer claims to have noticed a stabbing movement in his direction. He fired six shots at Biriq. Five of them hit him, one of them in the head. He was killed instantly.

Investigations suggest that the police did not even try to approach Biriq. Criticism also came from a “police insider”, who told the Frankfurter Rundschau that the officers escalated the situation “completely unnecessarily” with their decision to send the police dog into the room.

Note: We oppose any downplaying or justification of sexual violence. The fact that we also include the deaths of possible perpetrators in our chronicle does not mean that we approve of the previous behavior. The only decisive factor for inclusion in our statistics is whether the circumstances of death fall within our research criteria.

www.hessenschau.de, www.fr.de, www.copwatchffm.org, www.taz.de

FragdenStaat

mz.de

We commemorate Bilal Jaffal, who was found dead in his room in the Chemnitz asylum shelter Annabergstraße on the morning of May 19th, 2022. He was 31 years old.

Bilal Jaffal was a refugee from Lebanon. According to the official police report, he choked on his own vomit. However, the investigation is still ongoing and many questions remain unanswered.

According to eyewitnesses, Bilal Jaffal got into an argument with young men from Chemnitz the night before his death. During the altercation, Bilal Jaffal was hit on the head with a glass bottle. Research by the daily TAZ revealed that some of the men involved in the altercation shared right-wing content on social media.

A resident of the shelter told Bilal Jaffal's cousin that Jaffal had asked a security guard for a doctor, but that the guard had not called one. Residents also reported unacceptable conditions in the accommodation, many toilets and sanitary facilities were unusable, they felt like in prison.

The Chemnitz police are very hesitant in investigating this case. An autopsy was ordered only after pressure from a cousin of Bilal Jaffal. Relatives and friends demand clarification and a dignified commemoration.

www.taz.de

[zeit.de|(https://www.zeit.de/news/2022-09/13/einsatz-mit-toedlichem-ausgang-verfahren-eingestellt), antifa-info.net, Polizeimeldung

We commemorate a man with Croatian roots who was killed on May 2, 2022 during a police operation in Mannheim.

A doctor from the Central Institute for Mental Health had called the police because one of his patients had left the facility without prior consultation and might need help. Two officers and the doctor then searched the man. According to police reports, the man "resisted", "suddenly collapsed" and had to be resuscitated "for unknown reasons".

Videos of the crime show that the police officers sprayed the 47-year-old with pepper spray, caused him severe nosebleeds with punches, threw him on his stomach on the ground and knelt on him. They brutally punched him in the head. The man was handcuffed afterwards.

He died on the same day in the Mannheim University Hospital. According to a report commissioned by the Mannheim public prosecutor's office to determine the cause of death, the cause of death was "respiratory impediment due to position and fixation" and the resulting "metabolic derailment" and "suffocation due to bleeding in the upper respiratory tract".

At the end of 2022, the public prosecutor's office in Mannheim filed charges against the two police officers involved in the operation for bodily injury resulting in death and negligent homicide by omission. It is not yet clear whether the case will go to trial. Investigations are also still underway against the accompanying doctor.

zeit.de, tagesspiegel.de, sueddeutsche.de, www.initiative-2mai.de

FragDenStaat

autonome-antifa.org, hessenschau.de

Lower Class Magazin

We commemorate Johanna de Souza, who died on April 22, 2022, as a result of forced psychiatric treatment in a Munich hospital. She was 34 years old. Johanna de Souza had initially voluntarily sought stationary treatment for personal problems. At the hospital, she was given medication that caused severe side effects. She was not satisfied with the treatment and complained several times. For days she was tied to her bed, her mother was refused to visit her, and once a doctor even threatened to call the police if her mother did not leave the clinic.

On April 22, Johanna de Souza allegedly collapsed suddenly in the toilet. She was transferred to a cardiac clinic under resuscitation, where doctors diagnosed her death a short time later. Johanna de Souza's mother learned of this only indirectly through her cousin's German wife, with whose help she had tried to intervene at the psychiatric clinic the day before.

According to the autopsy, Johanna de Souza died of heart attack. Due to the determination of a "natural cause of death", no investigation was conducted into the circumstances of her death. Johanna de Souza's family fought for weeks for a second, independent autopsy. However, authorities repeatedly threatened a forced burial, eventually forcing the family to plan the funeral. Johanna de Souza was buried on July 29, 2022.

Friends describe Johanna de Souza as a cheerful and lively person and are shocked by her sudden death.

www.change.org

waz.de, Polizeimeldung, Cilip

Abendzeitung München

nepoli, waz.de

regensburg-digital.de

FragDenStaat

Thueringen24.de

Nordbayern.de,

The Polish citizen walked onto a busy road in an "apparently confused state". The police officers used physical force to bring him to the ground and tied him up. According to the police, he was then taken to a hospital in an ambulance "to determine his state of health". He died there the same day. The operation is now being investigated internally by the police, and an autopsy is planned to determine the specific cause of death.

www.taz.de

HNA 1, Sueddeutsche, HNA 2

We commemorate a Moroccan young man who died in Bonn on January 6, 2022 after five months in a coma. The 21-year-old had been injured and fallen into a coma during a police pursuit in July 2021. His name is unknown to us.

According to police, they stopped the young man in the early morning of July 24, 2021 to check him after a cell phone robbery nearby. He took flight and was pursued, climbing into the courtyard of a building and trying to get onto a roof via a dumpster. A police officer used pepper spray against him whereupon he stumbled and fell into the dumpster with the officer. Subsequently, he was arrested and brought to the police station, in the search small amounts of narcotics and a scale were found. As the young man's health deteriorated significantly, emergency medical services and ambulance were requested, which took him to the intensive care unit. There, internal head injuries were found which presumably led to the coma. According to official information the connection is "unclear", the police Cologne investigates because of the suspicion "fahrlässige Körperverletzung im Amt" (negligent bodily harm in office).

When asked about possible reasons for fleeing from the police, the uncle of the deceased said that he cam as a refugee from Morocco to Germany to study and that he had been in the country illegally.

ga.de

Parlamentarische Anfrage

Polizeimeldung

FragDenStaat

We commemorate Ayman Eskam M., who died on the night of December 20, 2021 in the Waldheim correctional facility (Saxony). He was 42 years old.

The Kurd with Iraqi citizenship had been in prison for 10 years. A fellow inmate witness raised accusations against prison staff for not dealing appropriately with Ayman M.'s heart problems, which presumably led to his death. During a hospital stay 2-3 weeks before his death, Ayman M. was told that he was receiving the wrong medication from the prison. On the night of his death, he had again developed heart problems, but the prison officials had put him off until the next day. A rescue team summoned at two o'clock in the morning was unable to help him.

Ayman M. was serving a life sentence. He allegedly executed Lebanese snack bar operator Jamal Al Mortada in his store in Döbeln, Saxony, in 2011. Ayman M. denied the crime until his death, but repeatedly gave different accounts of what happened. To date, it is not clear whether he actually committed the murder himself or whether an acquaintance fired the shots. Ayman M. was initially convicted only of being an accessory to manslaughter. Later, the Dresden Regional Court overturned this verdict and handed down a life sentence for murder. Ayman M. fought to have his case reopened.

Because of the unexplained circumstances of Ayman M.'s death, the Chemnitz public prosecutor's office initiated a death investigation. So far without significant results.

la-presse.org

We remember Georgios Zantiotis (Γιώργος Ζαντιώτης), who died on November 1, 2021 as a result of police action in Wuppertal. He was 24 years old.

In the early morning of November 1, Georgios Zantiotis was arrested for so far unknown reasons. Several police officers brutally took him to the ground and held him in a prone position for a long time. In a video of the incident Georgios Zantiotis' sister, who was present, protestes loudly against this action. The officers then took Georgios Zantiotis to the police station. Allegedly, he suddenly collapsed during a forced blood sample. Resuscitation attempts failed.

It was not until November 6, 2021, and after many requests, that the public was informed about this death. The public prosecutor's office in Wuppertal claims that it did not consider the event to be "relevant to the media". They also spread the news that the death of the young man was not connected with the behavior of the police. Rather, they said, there were indications that the consumption of drugs had led to his death.

However, an independent autopsy commissioned by his family shows that Georgios Zantiotis was not under the influence of drugs or alcohol at the time of his death. Instead, numerous injuries and hemorrhages were found on his body.

Investigations by the Hagen police into the cause of death were concluded without results after around two months. The family of Georgios Zantiotis and several initiatives continue to fight for clarification. The family of Georgios Zantiotis has filed a lawsuit against the Wuppertal police.

www.nd-aktuell.de, www.perspektive-online.net

We commemorate Kamal Ibrahim, who was shot dead by the police in the night of 3rd to 4th October 2021 in the refugee accommodation Harsefeld (district of Stade, Lower Saxony). He was 40 years old. 

Kamal Ibrahim had fled from Sudan to Germany. His long-time flatmates from the shared accommodation reported that he suffered from untreated mental illness. Although the city's social psychiatric service was informed about this, Kamal Ibrahim received no help. 

On 3rd October, Ibrahim's fellow residents called the police several times. They felt threatened by Kamal Ibrahim - who was in a state of mental emergency. The police first spoke to Kamal Ibrahim and then drove away again. During an second operation, Kamal Ibrahim was then briefly taken into police custody. Kamal Ibrahim is even said to have voluntarily offered to stay in custody overnight, but was taken back to the accommodation by court order. The police were called there a third time. During this operation, Kamal Ibrahim allegedly threatened the officers with a knife. The officers shot Kamal Ibrahim 11 times. He died of his injuries after beeing hospitalized.

The public prosecutor's office investigated the police officers on suspicion of manslaughter. Some citizens of the Stade district also filed criminal charges against the police officers involved on suspicion of bodily harm, bodily harm resulting in death and failure to render assistance. In April 2022, the public prosecutor's office discontinued the investigation.

taz.de 1 taz.de 2

We commemorate Elyas H., who was found dead in Lake Werbellin in Brandenburg on September 7th 2021. We do not know the exact date of his death. He was 30 years old.

Elyas H. grew up in Eritrea. He last lived in a refugee home in Lichterfelde-Buckow (Brandenburg). This "accommodation" is described by its residents as an isolation camp, as it is located far away from any infrastructure beyond the next village. Many residents are afraid of deportations and of the police and security services. Elyas H. had been living there for over six years. Before his death, all jobcenter benefits had been cut off. The home's management is said to have threatened him with eviction into homelessness. Despite being traumatized by his flight experiences and obvious problems with the authorities, he received no support from the refugee home's staff.

On September 1st 2022, Elyas H. had seriously injured himself in his room. An ambulance arrived only 1.5 hours later, in the meantime the security staff did not provide any first aid. Also, the paramedics refused - after their arrival - to enter the room of the seriously injured man without police escort. Fearing the police officers who arrived, Elyas H. fled through a window. He remained missing for a week until his body was finally found.

www.b-asyl-barnim.de, www.akweb.de

We commemorate Abdul I. who was shot by the police on the 24th of August 2021 in Groß-Gerau. He was 39 years old.

Previously, Abdul I. supposedly injured his mother in-law, as well as two of his neighbours with a knife. While arresting him, the police shot him several times, leading to serious injuries. Abdul I. died while being treated by emergency doctors. Abdul I. was hit by five bullets total. According to witness report the police shot him a total number of 14 times.

Abdul I. had previously never been known to engage in violent behaviour, as his family members reported.

www.fnp.de

We commemorate a refugee from the Russian Federation who died in a prison in Dresden on August 6, 2021. He was 51 years old. We do not know his name, nor do we know anything about the circumstances of his flight and imprisonment. Officially, the cause of death is indicated as "suicide".

www.ari-dok.org

We commemorate Soner A., who was shot dead by police in his apartment in Frankfurt am Main on June 22, 2021 in the age of 41.

A neighbor called the police because of an alleged noise disturbance in Soner A.'s apartment. The three police officers - including a police inspector trainee - first spoke to Soner A. through the apartment door. They had the information that Soner A. was mentally ill but not dangerous.

When Soner A. opened the door, an officer allegedly shouted, "He has a knife," whereupon she and the other officer fired ten shots at him. In a scuffle, Soner A. then allegedly seized the weapon from one of the officers and retreated into the apartment with it. When the SEK arrived two and a half hours later, Soner A. had already died of bleeding to death.

At first, the police justified the fatal shots as self-defense: Soner A. had been carrying a real-looking alarm gun, a knife and a bulletproof vest. Due to statements by the police trainee involved in the operation and critical inquiries by the public, the police later had to correct this account: Soner A. had only a folded knife in his pocket and was wearing an ordinary vest.

The investigations against two accused officers were discontinued one year after the incident. Lawyer Seda Basay-Yildiz, who represents Soner A.'s sisters, filed a complaint against this with the prosecutor general's office.

www.fr.de

We commemorate Omar K., who was shot dead by Hamburg police on May 28, 2021. He was 36 years old.

The Palestinian from Lebanon had lived in refugee accommodation in Hamburg-Winterhude. According to the police report, Omar K. is said to have caused damage to several cars and threatened bystanders with a household knife. The police then allegedly tried unsuccessfully to stop the man with pepper spray and tasers with the support of an SEK that “happened” to be in the area. A police officer fired seven shots at him. The answer to a parliamentary question reveals that Omar K. was initially handcuffed after the shots were fired. The restraints were only released “in the course of the initial medical treatment”. He died of his serious injuries on the spot.

www.taz.de, www.linksfraktion-hamburg.de

We commemorate Valdete M. from Munich, who was found hanged in a cell of the Aichach prison near Augsburg on May 21, 2021. She was 32 years old.

Valdete M. is said to have radicalized herself via social networks, where she came into contact with German jihadists in Syria. In 2018, she allegedly donated around 450 euros to an organization that was close to the al-Qaeda terror network. She was arrested as part of a nationwide raid on January 7, 2021, and was sent to the Aichach prison.

On April 26, 2021, Valdete M. allegedly attempted „suicide“. She was then transferred to the correctional psychiatric unit at Würzburg prison, but after two weeks she was transferred back to Aichach prison. According to a fellow inmate, however, she continued to be unwell.

On May 21, she was eventually found hanged in her cell. The lawyer of the deceased is convinced that the long period of imprisonment caused a feeling of hopelessness in his client, so that she was finally driven to „suicide“. The Munich Higher Regional Court justified the detention on the grounds of an alleged risk of flight. Valdete M. could try to go into hiding abroad - for example in her old homeland Kosovo. Although her father had offered to let her live with him, the court claimed that she did not have an established social environment in Germany.

Note: The ideology and actions of the Islamist terror network Al-Qaeda clearly contradict the political goals of the "Death in Custody Campaign". However, the only decisive factor for the inclusion of deaths in our statistics is whether the circumstances of the death fall within our research criteria. Whether the person killed is politically close to us is irrelevant. In the case of Valdete M., the criteria are met and she is therefore listed here.

www.deutschlandfunkkultur.de, www.sueddeutsche.de

We commemorate a man who starved to death in the Berlin-Tegel prison on May 9, 2021. His name and age are unknown to us.

The man with a history of migration had been in the Berlin-Tegel Prison for several years. According to information from the prisoner editors of "Lichtblick", the deceased had already refused to eat solid food since at least 2020. His physical condition deteriorated and the prison, in whose care he was, did not fulfill its duty of care. It let him die.

Medical, social-pedagogical and psychological care were allegedly provided, but apparently not adequately. The Lichtblick editorial team asks whether "the prisoner was still in control of his senses under the inhumane conditions" and refers to the "guarantor obligation" of the institution, which should be "punished for manslaughter or murder by omission".

Lichtblick 02/2021

We remember Sivan, who was killed in a police operation in Weil im Schönbuch on March 12, 2021. He was 35 years old.

Sivan is said to have been in a state of mental distress on 12 March when he got into an argument with the sales clerk in a bakery. The sales clerk called the police. While fleeing from the police, Sivan allegedly fell, whereupon police officers handcuffed him and tried to arrest him. According to the police report, Sivan lost consciousness and could not be revived.

The relatives are trying to clarify the circumstances of his death.

www.krzbb.de, www.twitter.de

We commemorate Qosay Sadam Khalaf, who died on March 6, 2021 in Delmenhorst after being violently arrested by the police. He was 19 years old.

Yezidi Qosay Sadam Khalaf was detained on March 5, using pepper spray and beatings, after he tried to flee from a drug check. During the arrest, he said he was having trouble breathing and asked for water. He was denied any help, apparently even by the paramedics who were called in. The paramedics and the police later claimed that Qosay had refused help. This is contradicted by a witness.

While in custody, he collapsed and was transferred to a hospital, where he died a day later. Among the youth in Delmenhorst, it is known that arrestees are beaten up while in custody. Qosay's friends suspect that this led to his death.

The investigations against the police officers and paramedics on duty were already discontinued in mid-May and early June 2021, respectively.

www.buntenunbinnen.de, nds-fluerat.org

We commemorate a person who was hit by a car and died on January 31, 2021 on the federal highway 44 in North Rhine-Westphalia while fleeing a police stop. We do not know the person's name or age. They had Algerian citizenship.

www.ari-dok.org, dserver.bundestag.de

We commemorate a person who died in Geldern-Pont Prison (NRW) on October 16, 2020. We do not know his name or how old he was.

The stateless prisoner suffered from a severe cardiovascular disease. The prison doctor in charge is said to have been aware of this. According to witnesses, the prisoner is said to have called attention to himself over an intercom early in the morning of October 16 and asked for medical help. He complained of chest pains. He was dead around five hours later. He did not receive any medical help.

The dead man's brothers are calling for the circumstances of his death to be clarified. It was only on their initiative that the public prosecutor's office in Kleve opened an investigation.

dielinke-nrw.de

We commemorate an Italian citizen who lost consciousness on the premises of a police station in Dresden in the early morning of August 16, 2020. He was briefly revived before dying shortly after in a hospital. He was 37 years old. 

The man reportedly threw bottles in a pub where staff restrained him and called the police. The Police then took him to the station. What happened there and led to his collapse is unclear. 

Intoxication was officially ruled out as the cause of death by an initial autopsy. The public prosecutor has not initiated an investigation against the officers involved. 

www.rnd.de

We commemorate a person who died in Leipzig prison on the 1st of August 2020. He was 20 years old. His name is unknown to us. The refugee from Morocco is said to have committed "suicide".

www.ari-dok.org

We remember Ferhat Mayouf, who died in a cell fire in Moabit Prison in Berlin on July 23, 2020. He was 36 years old.

After a fire broke out in his cell, Ferhat Mayouf screamed desperately for help for several minutes and knocked on the door. According to another prisoner, four prison officers stood in the hallway and waited for the fire department to arrive instead of opening the cell door and rescuing Ferhat Mayouf. At some point the shouts stopped. When the fire department opened the cell door more than twenty minutes later, Ferhat Mayouf was already dead.

Before that, he and the prison guards allegedly had an argument. The guards apparently then beat him up and isolated him in a specially secured detention room called "bunker." Three days before his death, Ferhat Mayouf had also asked to see a doctor at a detention review meeting because he had severe depression. But he received no help.

Ferhat Mayouf's brother filed a criminal complaint against the four guards who condoned his death. However, the case was dropped with no result.

www.taz.de, criminalsforfreedom.noblogs.org, www.ari-dok.org

We commemorate a Russian man who was shot by the police on July 7, 2020 in Mainz. He was 57. We do not know his name. The man reportedly attacked and injured a 76 year old with a knife during an argument. When police who had been called to the scene attempted to restrain him, he reportedly threatened them with a knife at which point they shot him.

www.fnp.de

We remember Mamadou Alpha Diallo, who died on June 19, 2020 in Twist (Lower Saxony) as a result of a police gunshot wound. He was 23 years old.

On June 18, 2020, the refugee from Guinea allegedly threatened people with a knife in a doctor's office and then in an apartment building next door; no one was injured. When the summoned police arrived, Mamadou Alpha Diallo was outside. He allegedly did not respond to the request to put down the knife and approached the officers. An officer then shot the young man. His leg artery was injured. He was resuscitated on the way to the hospital, but died of his injuries the following night.

It was later determined at Hanover Medical School that Mamadou Alpha Diallo was under the high influence of sedatives, which can have depression, panic attacks or convulsions as side effects. The Osnabrück public prosecutor's office considered the shooting to be self-defense and closed the investigation against the shooter.

www.taz.de, www.ari-dok.org

We commemorate Mohamed Idrissi, who was shot dead by a police officer in Bremen's Gröpelingen district on June 18th 2020. He was 54 years old.

Mohamed Idrissi had lived in Gröpelingen for many years. As part of a mental illness, he developed strong fears that affected him in his day to day life. Nevertheless, he had a good relationship with his neighbours. He was given a live-in aide for support.

Idrissi had caused major water damage in his flat. On June 18th 2020, the property management arranged for an inspection of the flat. The purpose was to determine whether the water-damaged electrical system posed a risk to Idrissi or other tenants. The property management informed Idrissi's caretaker, who called in the crisis team of the social psychiatric service (SpD). This in turn routinely called the police. The police arrived at Idrissi's home first. Instead of waiting for the crisis team of the SpD, the officers forced Idrissi out of his flat - without any legal basis. Video recordings of residents show that Idrissi was surrounded and cornered in the street by police officers with their weapons drawn. Idrissi showed an object - which turned out to be a knife. The officers escalated the situation by shouting at Idrissi. One officer sprayed Idrissi with pepper spray. Idrissi then tried to run away. The same officer then shot Idrissi in the chest.

The video footage also shows that the officers did not provide any first aid, but tied up the man who was bleeding to death and left him on the ground until the crisis service and a second patrol arrived. By then all help was too late: Mohamed Idrissi died of his injuries.

Since then, relatives and friends of Mohamed Idrissi have been fighting for clarification and justice. A first criminal case against the police officers was dropped by the public prosecutor's office. In January 2021, Idrissi's daughter forced the retrial with new evidence. To date, it remains without result.

www.taz.de

We remember a person from Somalia who died in custody in Neustrelitz on June 10, 2020. He was 19 years old. We do not know his name.

www.nordkurier.de

We remember Sailou Hydara, who did not survive the German prison conditions. He died in hospital on June 3, 2020, after contracting tuberculosis in Mannheim prison. He was 23 years old.

Sailou Hydara had been imprisoned in Mannheim Prison since the end of 2019. He was unfit for detention due to pulmonary tuberculosis. Nevertheless, he was transferred to the Theresienkrankenhaus Mannheim too late. There he died of sepsis in connection with open pulmonary tuberculosis.

Sailou Hydara was buried in Germany without his family in The Gambia being informed. There was no police investigation for failure to provide assistance.

www.voicegambia.com, www.ari-dok.org

We remember Mariusz K., who died on March 27, 2020 as a result of a cell fire in Tegel Prison.

He was a Romanian citizen and, according to fellow inmates, had previously tried to end his life. One prisoner spoke of him as “a kind, good-hearted, sensitive and helpful person - very subtle, an artist.” Mariusz K. had been in prison for 14 years when he died. The justice system describes his death as a “suicide”.

criminalsforfreedom.noblogs.org und www.bz-berlin.de

We commemorate a person with Iraqi citizenship whose name we do not know. The man was found dead in his cell in Bruchsal Prison on March 17, 2020. He was 25 years old. He died after the Ministry of Justice banned all visits to prisons due to the coronavirus pandemic.

www.ggbo.de

We commemorate Mohamed S., who was found dead in his cell in the Tegel Prison on February 15th, 2020. He was 26 years old.

According to official accounts, he died by "suicide".  Mohamed S. came to Germany from Somalia. It is not known why he was in custody and how long he had been there. He had been kept in section 2 of the facility which has structural deficits and is known for its extremely poor conditions. 

www.ggbo.de

We commemorate a man from Algeria, who lost his life fleeing from the police near Hannover on February 6th, 2020. He was 26 years old. 

According to media reports he fled from a highway guardhouse onto the A2 around 9pm and was fatally hit by a vehicle. Several hours earlier he had been arrested in his car during a traffic control. There was a warrant for his arrest and deportation out against him. 

www.rnd.de

We commemorate Mehmet B., who was shot dead by a police officer in Gelsenkirchen on January 5, 2020. He was 37 years old.

Mehmet B. was a Turkish citizen. He is said to have hit an unmanned police car with a baton and then approached the police officers standing next to it in a threatening manner. The officers later claimed to have also noticed a knife. A 23-year-old police trainee shot Mehmet B. with four shots. The case against the gunman was dropped.

www.taz.de

We commemorate a person with Serbian citizenship who was shot by the police in Stuttgart. He was 32 years old, his name is not known to us.

The man, who was in a state of mental emergency, allegedly drove his small car in the wrong direction into a traffic circle and crashed into an advertising pillar. He then fled the scene of the accident with a female companion. When police officers confronted him, he allegedly attacked them with a sword-like object. They shot him and injured him so severely that he died shortly after in the hospital on December 28, 2019.

www.sueddeutsche.de

We commemorate a refugee from Eritrea who was shot by a police officer on November 2, 2019. He was 26 years old. He reportedly walked through Hoppstädten-Weiersbach with an axe and was behaving threateningly. A woman called the police who then began a large-scale operation to look for the man. According to a report from the public prosecutor's office, two officials are said to have found the Eritrean crouching on the ground next to a tool shed. He suddenly jumped up, whereupon one officer shot him in the head. Little is known to us about the man's life.

www.taz.de

We commemorate Aman Alizada who was shot by a police officer in a refugee home in Stade on August 17, 2019. He was 19 years old.

Aman Alizada came to Germany as an unaccompanied minor refugee from Afghanistan when he was 15. He’s described as those who knew him as well integrated, and as someone who stood up for others. He had started an apprenticeship to become a carpenter. Shortly before his 18th birthday his asylum request was denied.

Due to increasing psychological stress he became ill and was temporarily placed in a closed psychiatric unit. It was reported to the Lower Saxony Refugee Council that Aman Alizada suffered an acute psychotic episode on the evening of his death. In response to this episodem another young person who was living in the refugee home called the police. When four police officers arrived, Aman Alizada was alone in a room on the ground floor. The police kicked in the locked door and asked him to come out. When he didn’t respond the police attacked him with pepper spray. It was claimed that he then moved toward the officers with a dumbbell in his hand, at which point a police officer shot him five times and killed him.

Since then the investigation against the killer has been shut down twice by the Stade public prosecutor, who described the case as an example of “crystal clear self-defense.”

www.taz.de, www.nds-fluerat.org

We commemorate a person who died by “suicide” in Burg Prison on August 16, 2019. He was 25 years old and came from Afghanistan. We do not know his name.

According to a press release from the Ministry of Justice, resuscitation attempts were initiated but failed. The deceased had been in custody since May of the same year.

mj.sachsen-anhalt.de

We commemorate Sadnia Rachid who died in a hospital in Erfurt on July 20, 2019. He was 32 years old. The Algerian man was arrested while attempting to steal a backpack. He had a number of different medicines on him at the time. An emergency doctor who had been called to the scene declared Rachid fit for interrogation and allowed him to take one of the medicines which was an opioid. During the interrogation he continuously fell unconscious. When the prosecution later ordered Rachid’s release he could not be woken up. During the night officials found that he wasn’t breathing. Emergency doctors brought him to the hospital where he died. 

His parents were charged 3500 Euros to transport his body back to Algeria and received no assistance from the German or Algerian governments. An investigation was never initiated.

www.taz.de

We remember a person from Poland who was found dead in a detention room in the deportation prison at Hamburg Airport on July 7, 2019. He was 30 years old. We do not know his name. According to a newspaper report, he had been deported to Poland several times and had always returned to Germany.

The man was reportedly known to the authorities as a drug user. A doctor assessed him as fully fit for detention, but did not perform a drug-screening blood draw during the medical admission assessment. We do not know the outcome of the death investigation that was initiated after the man's death.

Drucksache 21/17787 der Freien Bürgerschaft der Hansestadt Hamburg

We commemorate a person from Afghanistan whose name we do not know. He was found dead in the Kiel correctional facility on June 22, 2019. He was 24 years old.

The young man was serving a 40-day substitute prison sentence and was suffering from his incarceration. He shouted from his window into the yard that he was now going to kill himself. Later, correctional officers at Kiel Prison discovered the man hanged in his cell.

www.shz.de

We commemorate Adel B., who was shot by police through a closed door in Essen Altendorf on June 18, 2019. Previously, the 32-year-old had called the police himself, according to their statements, and announced that he wanted to kill himself.

When the police arrived in Altendorf, Adel B. was on the street. The officers surrounded him. A verbal confrontation ensued. Meanwhile, Adel B. was on the phone with his partner. After some time, Adel B. told the police officers that he no longer had suicidal intentions and made his way home. The officers followed him. He reached his apartment, entered it and closed the door behind him. A short time later he was shot.

The police initially claimed to have been attacked by Adel B. with a knife. However, a video that emerged later proved that Adel B. had already closed the door behind him and a police officer unsuccessfully tried to open it with a kick before the shot fell through the glass pane of the door.

The police deleted the video from the witness's smartphone. The evidence of the police's actions only came to public attention because it had been automatically stored in a cloud. Nevertheless, the public prosecutor's office discontinued the investigation against the officers involved, citing self-defense.

www.labournet.de, www.neues-deutschland.de

We commemorate a person from Algeria who died during a police operation in Baienfurt, Baden-Württemberg, on June 14, 2019. We do not know his name. He was 39 years old.

The man was to be deported to Algeria after ten years of residence in Germany. When police officers rang his doorbell and asked him to pack his things, he hugged his wife and climbed out of the window. He fell eight meters and succumbed to his injuries on the spot.

www.ari-dok.org

We commemorate William Tonou-Mbobda, who died on April 26, 2019, after being forcibly restrained at the University Hospital Hamburg-Eppendorf. He was 34 years old.

The engineering student had voluntarily sought psychiatric treatment and was sitting on a bench in front of the clinic on the morning of April 21. Presumably in response to his refusal to take a pill, security guards brutally attacked him. Three of them sat on him, hit him in the kidney area with their knee, and covered his mouth, whereupon William Tonou-Mbobda allegedly shouted several times, "Let me go, I can't breathe."

The brutal attack went directly into an attempt at resuscitation, which initially succeeded. Five days later, however, William Tonou-Mbobda died in intensive care. The investigation by the Hamburg public prosecutor's office against three security guards and a doctor for bodily injury resulting in death was discontinued in August 2020.

www.taz.de

We commemorate Rooble Warsame, who died in a Schweinfurt police cell on February 26th, 2019. He was 22 years old.

Police officers took the refugee from Somalia into custody at five o'clock in the morning after a disturbance in the so-called "Anker Center" Schweinfurt. Two and a half hours later, he was found dead in his cell. According to official accounts, he had strangled himself with a strip of cloth tied to the cell bars. However, there are several inconsistencies: For example, the cloth strip was attached at a height of 1.50 meters. The 1.78 meter tall Warsame is said to have died in a squatting position in full contact with the ground. He is also said to have previously separated the strip of cloth from a blanket with his bare hands.

In addition, relatives found traces of abuse when Warsame's body was washed. They doubt the "suicide" thesis and demand an independent investigation. Donations have been collected for this, but the execution or results are still pending. In the fall of 2020, the investigation was surprisingly reopened by the public prosecutor's office. Subsequently expert reports declared the suicide thesis possible. A DNA expertise of the blanket is still pending.

ari-dok.org, revoltmag.org, infranken.de

We commemorate a person who died on February 21 in the Geldern-Pont correctional facility (NRW). He was 42 years old. The man from Romania was found lifeless in his cell. We do not know anything about the circumstances that led to his death.

www.rp-online.de

We commemorate a person from Eastern Europe who died in a Stuttgart police drunk tank on January 26, 2019. His name is not known to us. He was 51 years old.

Police arrested the man in downtown Stuttgart due to an unpaid fine. The officers locked him up in a drunk tank before he was given a substitute custodial sentence. In the early morning hours, an officer on a patrol found him dead in his cell. Officials said he died of cardiovascular failure due to withdrawal symptoms.

stuttgarter-zeitung.de

We commemorate a person who died in a drunk tank of the Stuttgart police on January 23, 2019. He was 48 years old.

The man from Eastern Europe was riding the Stuttgart streetcar in the afternoon of January 22 in an inebriated state. Two employees of the transport company called the police. They took him to a drunk tank. During a patrol that night, an officer found him lifeless in his cell. During the autopsy, the coroner's office found a hidden brain hemorrhage. This indicated a blow or a fall. Where the injury came from is unclear.

stuttgarter-zeitung.de

We commemorate Aristeidis L., who collapsed during a police operation in Berlin Tempelhof on December 27, 2018, and died on January 12, 2019. He was 36 years old.

Prior to the the police operation, he had been staying in a bakery. He was in a mental state of emergency. According to an employee, he had stripped down to his pants, rioted, and swore, whereupon she called the police and filed a trespassing charge. Instead of taking de-escalative measures, the police officers pulled Aristeidis L. out of the store, grabbing his arms, and brought him to the ground on the street. With reinforcement, they first handcuffed him, and later added ankle cuffs as well. They locked him in a van, where he was fixated laying on his stomach and was driven to the detention center.

Once there, all nine officers from the scene accompanied him during the transfer. When Aristeidis L. tried to physically resist the coercive measures, a police officer used pepper spray on him. The irritant can be lethal, especially in people with pre-existing conditions, in psychologically exceptional situations or under the influence of drugs. Cannabis, cocaine and opiates were found in Aristeidis L.'s blood.

While being restrained during the transfer, Aristeidis L. collapsed. He was taken to the intensive care unit and put into an artificial coma. The diagnosis a few days later was brain death. The cause of death is listed as positional asphyxia due to mechanical restraint. The autopsy revealed the cause to be a lack of oxygen in the brain, which presumably resulted in total from a strong stress reaction in a state of excitement as well as drug consumption and the fixation in the prone position. Despite this subsequent reconstruction of the circumstances of the crime, which point to gross errors on the part of the officers, the trial was discontinued in March 2019 - after only two months. A complaints procedure was dismissed.

www.taz.de

We remember a person from Sudan who died in a detention center in Lower Saxony in 2018. We do not know his name, nor the exact place. We also have no information about the circumstances of his death. Officially, his death is reported as "suicide".

www.hna.de

We commemorate a person who died in 2018 in police custody in the department "Pl. 16" in Munich. We know that this person had Polish citizenship. We do not have any information beyond that. Neither do we know the name of the person, nor the age, nor more detailed background on why the person was in custody.

Drucksache 18/7143 im Bayerischen Landtag

We commemorate an Indian citizen, who was found dead in his cell in the Halle Prison on December 28th, 2018. He was 28 years old.

www.sachsen-anhalt.de

We commemorate a young refugee from Syria who was found dead in his cell in Herford prison on the evening of October 26, 2018. He was 17 years old. We do not know his name. He was considered "suicidal" and was under special surveillance. Nevertheless, he is said to have strangled himself.

www.ari-dok.org

We commemorate Amed Ahmad who died on September 29, 2018 after suffering severe burn injuries. He was 26 years old. On September 17, 2018, his cell in Kleve prison burned down. The circumstances of the fire have not been clarified until today. Amed Ahmad's cries for help were ignored.

Amed Ahmad was Kurdish and had fled from Syria to Germany. He was unjustly imprisoned for over two months; his arrest was allegedly the result of a misidentification. Although this mistake was obvious, it was only cleared up when Amed Ahmad was already dying. Despite many inconsistencies and open questions regarding the responsibility of the responsible authorities and officials, the public prosecutor's office closed the investigation in 2019. Amed Ahmad's relatives and friends continue to fight for justice.

www.taz.de, www.neues-deutschland.de

We commemorate a person from Vietnam who died during a police operation in Berlin on June 29, 2018. He was 37 years old. We do not know his name.

Trying to escape from the police, the man fell from a window on the fourth floor of an apartment and succumbed to his serious injuries. In the process, he fell from a window on the fourth floor of an apartment and succumbed to his serious injuries.

www.maz-online.de

We commemoreate a person from Georgia who died in deportation custody in Büren on June 4, 2018. We do not know his name. Allegedly, he hanged himself in his cell. The Georgian was 41 years old. He was locked up in a cell of the solitary confinement department.

www.ari-dok.org

We commemorate Mahmood J., who was shot and killed by police in Flensburg on May 30, 2018. He was 24 years old.

The young man from Eritrea allegedly attacked a female police officer on a Deutsche Bahn train with a kitchen knife. She left the compartment. When she returned, the Eritrean scuffled with another passenger who had tried to stop him. The police officer then shot him.

www.welt.dewww.merkur.de

We commemorate Faraidun Salam Aziz, who died on May 1, 2018 after falling from the 4th floor in the Lessingstraße refugee shelter in Apolda. He was 38 years old.

Faraidun Salam Aziz had fled the Kurdish part of Iraq in 2008 and had been living in Apolda for 8 years. On the night of May 1, a roommate heard security guards ordering him to lower his voice, which he did not obey. They grabbed him, took him to his room on the 4th floor and locked him up. Faraidun Salam Aziz demanded about ten times that the door be opened again, then he fell out of the window and died of his injuries. The next day, the witness who had observed the night's events and other residents of the shelter were visited by four security guards and intimidated into not giving a statement to the police. As late as autumn 2018, the police had not taken any statements. We do not have any more recent information on this.

www.fluechtlingsrat-thr.de

We commemorate a man from Georgia who died in Leipzig Prison on April 29, 2018. The cause of death is declared as "suicide". He was 27 years old. His name is not known to us.

www.ari-dok.org

We commemorate Matiullah Jabarkhil, who was shot dead by police in Fulda on April 13, 2018. He was 19 years old. 

The refugee from Afghanistan wanted to ask for bread at 4 a.m. in a bakery near his accommodation. However, a saleswoman locked the door from the inside. Thereupon, the young man allegedly threw stones at the shop window. A few minutes later, police arrived. Matiullah Jabarkhil fled, and the police ran after him. After about 150 meters, he was caught. An officer fired twelve shots at the unarmed youth. Four hit him, two of them fatally. He died of internal bleeding at the scene.  

The investigation against the shooter was dropped in early 2019, citing self-defense. After a cellphone video of an eyewitness - himself a police trainee - surfaced, the investigation was reopened in March 2019. The video shows Matiullah Jabarkhil running away from police officers. In early 2020, the investigation was again suspended, but in August 2020 it was reopened at the request of Matiullah Jabarkhil's brother. In July 2021, the case was closed for the third time. The initiative in memory of Matiullah continues to work for clarification and justice.

www.wsws.org, www.noborder-frankfurt.antira.info, migrant-support.com

We commemorate a man whose name is unknown to us. He was found hanged in the Bremervörde prison on April 10, 2018. The father of seven children aged 11 to 15 had fled from Iraq to Germany.

www.ari-dok.org

We commemorate Bekir B., who was shot by police in Neubrandenburg on March 1, 2018. He was 27 years old.

A witness had observed three men suspected of breaking into a kiosk and called the police. When the officers arrived, with drawn guns they ordered the men to leave the kiosk with their hands up. Bekir B. then allegedly used pepper spray against one of the police officers. The officer shot him in the upper body from a distance of two or three meters. Bekir B. died in hospital that same night. The public prosecutor's office closed the investigation against the shooter less than a month later. In their opinion, he had shot in self-defense.

www.taz.de

We commemorate Hamid P. He was shot by a member of SEK, a Germany police tactical unit, on February 9th, 2018 in Wuppertal. He was 43 years old. 

According to the prosecution, Hamid P. was a former high-ranking member of “Osmanen,” an active biker group in Germany. SEK officers were supposed to execute an arrest warrant issued against him. While doing so they shot and killed him. The case against the officer who fired the shot was closed without results in January 2019. Investigations had shown that at the time of his death, Hamid P. was unarmed. He was however holding a mobile phone in his hand, which the officer who fired at him could have mistaken for a weapon. Hamid P. furthermore used an “irritation device,” resulting in a loud bang and sounding like a shot fired from a gun to the officers present. The prosecution called the incident a “tragic misunderstanding” of which the officer was not guilty. 

Note: The Osmanen-Germania was a now banned rocker group. In addition to its activities in the area of organized crime, it has also attracted attention for its proximity to the fascist Grey Wolves and for its violence and intimidation against Kurds, leftists and opposition activists from Turkey. This contradicts the anti-racist and anti-fascist claim of the "Death in Custody Campaign". However, the only decisive factor for the inclusion of deaths in our statistics is whether the circumstances of death fall within our research criteria. Whether the person killed is politically close to us is irrelevant. In the case of Hamid P., the criteria are met, and he is therefore listed here.

www.wz.de

We commemorate a man with Kazakh citizenship who was shot dead by Darmstadt police in the night of January 21-22, 2018. He was 41 years old. His wife had called the police for help because he had been violent towards her. According to the police, the 41-year-old was armed with knives. When he opened the door for them, they immediately shot. The woman and his two children suffered shock and had to be treated in hospital. 

Note: Of course, we are against any trivialization and justification of partnership violence or domestic violence. The fact that we also include the deaths of possible perpetrators in our chronicle does not imply any approval of the previous behavior. The decisive factor for inclusion in our statistics is whether the circumstances of death fall within our research criteria.

www.faz.net 

We commemorate a person who died in the Billwerder prison in Hamburg on the 3rd of January 2018. He was 30 years old. His name is unknown to us.

He was found hanged in his cell in the morning. The man was an asylum seeker from Afghanistan. His asylum application was rejected on October 2nd, 2017, and he was threatened with deportation. A day later, he was arrested for a violent crime and remanded in custody. Although he considerably injured himself while there, the Hamburg Senate announced upon request that he had shown no signs of suicidal tendencies beforehand.

www.ari-dok.org

We commemorate a person from Sudan who died by "suicide" on December 29, 2017 in the JVA Hannover. We have no reliable information about his name and age. We know from a fellow prisoner that the deceased was separated from an important social contact the day before his death. We do not know why or how long he had been detained.

Letter from a prisoner at Hannover Prison, confirmation of death by e-mail dated 21.10.2021 from the Lower Saxony Ministry of Justice

We commemorate Ümit Vardar, who died on November 5, 2017, from the consequences of two brain tumors that had not been treated in a correctional facility. He was 52 years old.

Ümit Vardar spent 27 years in a Berlin correctional facility after a forensic assessor diagnosed him with paranoid schizophrenia. In August 2017, Ümit Vardar was released from the correctional facility hospital and placed in a crisis shelter. Two months later, two brain tumors were discovered, which he likely had already developed in the correctional facility, possibly as a result of medication treatment there. He died on November 5, 2017, at the age of 52, in the Vivantes Clinic in Berlin-Neukölln.

Aysel Vardar, Ümit Vardar's mother, sued the state of Berlin and was represented by two of Ümit Vardar's brothers, both lawyers. The regional court found that the patient had "almost certainly" already developed the tumor in June 2017. With proper diagnosis and analysis, death probably would not have been prevented, but life expectancy could have been extended. Employees of the correctional facility hospital "treated the patient incorrectly." The state of Berlin must pay the patient's relatives €35,000 in compensation.

www.taz.de, fragdenstaat.de

We commemorate a refugee from China who was found hanged in the transit area of Frankfurt (Main) Airport on October 10, 2017. He was 29 years old. We do not know his name.

www.ari-dok.org

Abdullah K. was found hanged in his cell at the Hamburg pre-trial detention center on August 29, 2017. He was 40 years old.

The man from Syria had been in pre-trial detention since June 2017. The authorities investigating the case accused him, among other things, of joining the Islamist group "Jabhat al-Nusra" in Syria in 2012 and of being involved in armed clashes with Syrian government troops and the Kurdish People's Defense Units (YPG).

Note: The al-Nusra Front was a jihadist group in Syria responsible for, among other things, massacres of Kurdish civilians. This clearly contradicts the political goals of the Death in Custody campaign. However, the only decisive factor for the inclusion of deaths in our statistics is whether the circumstances of death fall within our research criteria. Whether the person killed is politically close to us is irrelevant. In the case of Abdullah K., the criteria are met and he is therefore listed here.

www.taz.de

We commemorate Reza F., who was killed by the German deportation regime. He was 26 years old. The refugee from Iran was found lifeless in his cell in Stadelheim Prison (Munich) on June 26, 2017. He is said to have hanged himself. He was initially resuscitated, but died of his injuries two days later.

Reza F. came to Germany via Bulgaria in spring 2017, but was sentenced to two months in prison for "illegal residence." An attempt to deport him to Bulgaria failed due to his passive resistance. As a result, a judge issued a deportation detention order against him. Immediately before his planned transfer to the deportation prison in Eichstätt, Reza F. died.

www.ari-dok.org

We commemorate a person from Kosovo whose name we do not know. He was found hanged in his cell in Bielefeld Prison on June 6, 2017. He was 41 years old.

www.bild.de

We remember Savas K., who died during a police action in Frankfurt (Main) on June 1, 2017. He was 42 years old. Savas K. was to be evicted from his apartment. In the process, he was fatally injured by the police.

www.dailysabah.com, www.fnp.de

We commemorate Ahmet Agir who died on May 12, 2017. He was suffocated during a violent restraint in a psychiatric ward, leading to cardiac arrest. He was 31 years old.

The man from Turkey was subjected to a coercive measure on May 9, 2017 in the closed psychiatric ward at the Klinikum Bremen Ost. Despite being told he couldn't breathe, staff didn't let go of him until he went into cardiac arrest from shortness of breath. The clinic's defibrillators were not used. Ahmet Agir was hospitalized while in a coma. He died three days later. A year after this deadly coercive measure in the psychiatric ward, the public prosecutor's office stopped investigating the responsible clinic staff.

www.weser-kurier.de

We commemorate Michael Haile, who was shot dead by police in Essen on April 27, 2017. He was 22 years old. 

The police were called to Michael Haile's house because of a disturbance. Michael Haile opened the door when the officers knocked and was killed shortly after by a police bullet. According to the police, he was holding a kitchen knife in his hand and did not put it down even when asked to do so several times. The gunman shot him directly in the heart. 

Michael Haile grew up in Eritrea in great poverty. At the age of 19, he decided to go to Europe. Mostly on foot, he made his way through Sudan and Libya to the Mediterranean. Then first to Italy and from there to Germany. In his apartment building he was considered a friendly roommate. He is said to often have sung loudly in his apartment. Therefore, there were frequent complaints from one of his neighbors. For Michael Haile himself, it was often too loud in the noisy house. He therefore wanted to move away. His friend and his sister describe him as short and lanky, rather timid and a devout churchgoer. They cannot believe that the officer felt so threatened that he had to shoot.

www.ari-dok.org

We commemorate a person from Somalia whose name we do not know. He was found strangled to death in his cell at Halle Prison on March 16, 2017. The man was 31 years old. He had arrived at Halle Prison the day before to serve a substitute prison sentence; this would have ended on April 12.

www.mz-web.de

We commemorate a man from Tunisia who was shot by the police in Herten (federal state of Northrhine-Westphalia) on February 19th, 2017. He was 30 years old. 

In the early evening, the refugee allegedly entered the ground floor flat of an apartment building via a balcony. The inhabitant, a 72-year-old woman, fled to her neighbors and called the police. The police officers searched the flat. As they discovered the man, one of the officers shot at him twice. He died on the spot. He had allegedly threatened the police officers with a knife. The refugee had been living in Herten since 2012. He had escaped from a closed psychiatric ward, where he had previously been committed against his will.

www.ari-dok.org

We remember Taner D., who died on October 16, 2016 in Bielefeld-Brake as a result of a police operation. He was 39 years old.

The Turkish restaurant owner and father of two had been visiting his wife, who was separated from him, and his two-year-old daughter. Because he was drunk and under the influence of drugs, his former partner threw him out. As he continued to make noise in the hallway and tried to get back into the apartment, neighbors called the police because of a disturbance. When five officers arrived, the situation escalated: the police officers punched Taner D. in the face and used pepper spray on him. He had to lie handcuffed on his stomach on the floor for a long time. Eyewitnesses report that one of the police officers reacted derogatorily to Taner D.'s calls for help to Allah. Taner D. collapsed and had to be resuscitated six times on the way to hospital. He was dead 34 hours after the police operation. The toxicology report assumes a heart attack. His widow filed a criminal complaint for involuntary manslaughter. However, the public prosecutor's office dropped the investigation shortly afterwards.

www.nw.de, www.nw.dewww.westfalen-blatt.de

Dschaber a.-B. was found hanged in his cell in Leipzig Prison on October 12, 2016, just a few days after his arrest. He was 22 years old.

The Syrian was accused of planning and preparing an explosives attack. The police assumed a close connection to the so-called Islamic State. An expert commission investigating the death of Jaber a.-B. criticized the fact that the prisoner was not granted access to the yard. Signs of a developing suicide risk were also ignored. The commission's report states: “The prisoner on remand should not have been left alone at any time.” The family of Jaber a.-B. filed a criminal complaint for involuntary manslaughter. The investigation was closed in June 2017.

Note: The so-called Islamic State stands for the oppression of women and queer people, the persecution and subjugation of religious minorities and dissidents and is responsible, among other things, for the genocide of the Ezidis in South Kurdistan in August 2014. This is in clear contradiction to the political goals of the “Death in Custody Campaign”. However, the only decisive factor for the inclusion of deaths in our statistics is whether the circumstances of the death fall within our research criteria. Whether the person killed was politically close to us is irrelevant. In the case of Jaber a.-B., the criteria are met and he is therefore listed here.

www.taz.de

We commemorate Hussam Fadl who was shot to death from behind by police officers outside of a refugee accommodation in Berlin-Moabit on September 27th, 2016. He was 29 years old.

The police had been called after a sexual assault on Hussam Fadl´s daughter. They arrested the perpetrator and put him inside a police van. Hussam Fadl showed up at the scene and was shot four times by several officers. One shot in the back was fatal. The Police claimed self-defence, alleging that Hussam Fadl had a knife on him. Several eye-witness state otherwise. A kitchen Knife which was later found at the scene did not have Hussam Fadl´s fingerprints on it.

www.ari-dok.org, www.taz.de

We commemorate a Tunesian man who died in a Heidelberg intensive care unit following an attempted suicide. He was 23 years old. We do not know his name. On July 30, 2016 the Tunisian asylum-seeker was found strangled in a Heidelberg-South police station cell. Officials and an urgent care doctor attempted to revive him, at which point he was brought to an intensive care unit. On August 6 he died of his injuries without having regained consciousness.

www.ari-dok.org

We commemorate two refugees who died in the period between the 1st of January 2015 and the 31st of July 2016 in Leipzig prison. We do not know their names, nor the exact day of their deaths nor do we know how old they were.

www.ari-dok.org

We commemorate a refugee who died in the period between the 1st of January 2015 and the 31st of July 2016 in Dresden prison. We do not know his name, nor do we know how old he was.

www.ari-dok.org

We commemorate two refugees who died in the period between the 1st of January 2015 and the 31st of July 2016 in Leipzig prison. We do not know their names, nor the exact day of their deaths nor do we know how old they were.

www.ari-dok.org

We commemorate a young refugee who was shot near Würzburg on July 18, 2016. He was 17 years old. The young Afghani attacked and badly injured passengers on a regional train near Würzburg with an axe and knife. He fled when the train made an emergency stop. A special police task force, which happened to be in the vicinity because of another operation, pursued the attacker. He then allegedly attacked the police officers with his weapons, whereupon they fired several shots at him. Two of them hit him fatally.

Note: This is a borderline case. For our research, we generally decided against including cases in which the person killed had previously deliberately endangered the lives of uninvolved third parties. This is clearly the case here. However, the attacker had already removed himself from the situation by the time he was shot, so there was no longer any immediate danger to uninvolved third parties. Therefore, the case is listed here.

www.wikipedia.org

We commemorate Amos Thomas who was shot by police in Erharting, Mühldorf on July 13, 2016. He was 62 years old. 

Two Bavarian Red Cross employees along with two police officers were supposed to bring the Liberian man from a senior living home to a psychiatric clinic. Shortly after they entered the room, the police shot him dead. The police claimed to have shot in self defense after Amos Thomas approached them with a knife and cut an officer on the leg. Amos Thomas came to Germany in 1993. After his asylum request was rejected he lived in Germany on a temporary deportation reprieve until his death. He lived the last ten years of his life with chronic schizophrenia in a senior home. 

www.ari-dok.org

We remember Katip A., who fell unconscious when he was arrested by the police in Emmerich on April 19, 2016 and died a few hours later. He was 32 years old.

Katip A. was under the influence of drugs and was allegedly on the rampage. The police used pepper spray and physical force to bring him to the ground and kept him restrained for a long time. Many witnesses observed the operation, including Katip A.'s brother. Some reported excessive force by the police officers and that Katip A. was breathing heavily. Officially, the cause of death is given as a cardiac arrhythmia as a result of drug use. There was no investigation into the officers involved.

www.rp-online.de

We commemorate a man from the Czech Republic who was found hanged in Wulkow Prison in Brandenburg on April 11, 2016. His name is unknown to us. He was 47 years old. The man was accused of being involved in a robbery at a caravan center. He was facing a prison sentence of several years. In a suicide note, he is said to have referred exclusively to the criminal proceedings.

www.maz-online.de

We commemorate a young Egyptian whose name we do not know. He died on March 11, 2016 while fleeing from the police. He was 17 years old.

The young man died near Munich as a result of jumping out of a moving night train from Rome after two border control officers discovered him under the seat of an otherwise empty train compartment. While the investigators were trying to establish the man's identity, he jumped from the 160 km/h train. He was found seriously injured a short time later near Munich. He died before rescue workers reached him.

www.ari-dok.org

We remember a person whose name we do not know. He was registered in a Berlin refugee home at the time of his death. He was shot dead on March 2, 2016 while fleeing from the Berlin police. The police shot at a moving car and the driver was fatally shot. The officers accused him of being a member of a “gang of burglars from the Balkans” who had allegedly committed several burglaries in bakeries and clothes stores.

www.tagesspiegel.de

We commemorate Yaya Jabbi. He allegedly committed “suicide” in the Hahnöfersand prison in Hamburg in the night of February 19th, 2016. He was 21 years old.

Yaya was arrested by police at “Hamburger Berg” at January 14th, 2016 Yaya. He was accused of possession of 1.65g of Cannabis - a quantity that is generally allowed for personal consumption and not prosecuted. Nevertheless, Yaya was taken into custody, where he remained for more than a month. On February 19th, 2016 in the morning, he was found lifeless in his cell. His death was deemed a “suicide” by the judicial authority. However, there are doubts about the official account: Yaya was a Muslim and a believer. Neither his family nor his friends ever considered him at risk for suicide. The so-called suicide screening, before he began his custody sentence, did not show any suicide risk either. Nevertheless, the prosecution has already closed the Jabbi file.

www.hamburg-global.de

We commemorate a person from Somalia who was found hanged in his cell at Uelzen Prison on October 19, 2015. He was 24 years old. We do not know his name. The young man had been taken into custody only a few days earlier. He was being investigated on suspicion of manslaughter. According to the JVA, there were no indications of a "suicide" risk.

www.haz.de

We commemorate a young refugee from Afghanistan who presumably died while fleeing the police near Passau in the middle of July in 2015. He was 17 years old. We don’t know his name. 

In the middle of July, 2015, federal police met a group of refugees who were walking along a highway toward Regensburg. A young man presumably climbed over a guard rail to escape the police and fell 20 meters to his death. His body was discovered on September 1, 2015 by a pedestrian under a highway bridge near Passau. The documents found in the backpack next to his body belonged to a 17 year old refugee from Afghanistan. 

www.ari-dok.org

We commemorate Iliaz M. who was found asphyxiated in the Zwickau detention center on July 4, 2015. The refugee from Pakistan was handcuffed at his hands and feet. According to the autopsy he hanged himself and had first placed the handcuffs on himself.

www.ari-dok.org

We commemorate Grigorij S., who was shot dead by the police in Memmingen on March 11, 2015. He was 48 years old.

Grigorij S. was described by his neighbors as friendly and quiet. He moved with his family from Kazakhstan to Germany in the mid-1990s, where the marriage broke down and a dispute over the children emerged. When the son was taken away from Grigorij S. by the police to be placed in a foster family, the father expressed his displeasure. As a result, he was convicted of insult and slander. Because of several previous convictions - for what we do not know - he received a twelve-month prison sentence.

Grigoij S. did not serve the prison term. When he was picked up by six undercover policemen at his front door - among them the policeman who had picked up his son - he allegedly pulled out a knife and ran away backwards. Shortly after that he was shot from the distance of only one meter - from the pistol of the policeman he already knew. There are no independent witnesses of the shooting. The prosecutor's office quickly assumed self-defense and did not open a case against the shooter.

taz.de

We commemorate a Somali refugee who was shot to death by the police in front of his building in Husum on December 4th, 2014. He was 24 years old.

The man is said to have injured a couple that lived in the same building with a knife during a fight. The couple fled onto the street and police officers who had been called to the scene claim to have urged him to come out of the building. He then rushed towards an officer with a knife in hand. This officer shot five bullets at him. He died at the scene of internal bleeding. The Prosecution's office in Flensburg stated just 12 hours later that this was a clear case of self defence. The case against the officer who shot this man was closed in February of 2015.

www.ari-dok.org

We commemorate Constantin M. who was found dead in his cell in the Herford detention center in the early morning of August 31, 2014. He was 21 years old.

After a burglary Constantin M. was served a two years prison sentence. While in prison he hurt himself repeatedly and survived several attempted suicides. Although prison doctors declared Constantin M. unfit for detention, the prison administrators arranged for his further detention along with violent solitary confinement and restraints. This was justified with the higher costs of alternative, psychiatric care accommodation and in order to facilitate his deportation. Constantin M. ultimately died after the greatest agony of an untreated peritonitis. A week before his death he was already complaining of a stomach ache. He was denied a detailed diagnosis and appropriate treatment. Constantin M.’s mother and brother who lived in Baden-Württemberg first heard of his death through a Romanian television report. At that point his body had already been cremated. 

www.lz.de

We commemorate Rasmae Koala who was found dead in the Bruchsal detention center on August 9, 2014. He was 33 years old. 

Rasmae Koala was sentenced to ten years in prison after stabbing his partner during an argument in 2011. While in custody he was reportedly aggressive toward law enforcement officers and was placed in isolation from other prisoners by the middle of 2012. By February 2014 he reportedly refused to eat the provided meals and only ate muesli and water. He continued to lose weight and at the time of his death weighed only 57 Kilos while standing 1.85 meters tall. The public prosecutor ruled undernourishment and malnutrition as the cause of his death. After Rasmane Koala's death it became known that the prison had failed to report his hunger strike to the Justice Department. The prison also failed to inform the Justice Department of his ongoing solitary confinement, which was required to be re-approved every three months. According to an internal email, the head of the prison assumed that Rasmane Koala suffered from “delusions” that required treatment.

The Karlsruhe public prosecutor therefore initiated an investigation against the prison director and the prison doctor for negligent homicide, which was later discontinued without any findings. The Baden-Württemberg Justice Department suspended the head of the prison and commissioned a committee of experts to develop proposals for dealing with prisoners with mental disorders.

Note: We oppose any trivialization or justification of patriarchal violence. The fact that we also include the deaths of perpetrators in our chronicle does not mean that we condone their previous behavior. The decisive factor for inclusion in our statistics is whether the circumstances of death fall within our research criteria.

www.taz.de

We commemorate André B. who was shot in the back by an undercover police officer in Burghausen, Bavaria on July 25, 2014. He was 33 years old. 

On the evening of July 25, two undercover police officers were supposed to carry out an arrest warrant against André B., who was suspected of dealing marijuana. The officers waited for André B. outside of his girlfriend’s building. Shortly after 6pm in the building’s courtyard, one of the officers supposedly fired a warning shot before aiming at André B. and shooting. He was shot in the back of his head and died at the scene. The report doesn’t describe any reason for the police having shot him.

Following his death neighbors laid candles and flowers at the scene and demonstrated their anger toward the police. Emergency services had immediately placed a cloth over his head without attempting any kind of life-saving emergency care. It had taken 45 minutes for an emergency doctor to arrive. The day following André B.’s death around 50 people gathered for an unregistered demonstration and chanted “Police: Murderers.” In 2016 the public prosecutor closed the investigation against the shooter. 

www.insalzlach24.de

We commemorate Muslim H., who was killed by employees of Landshut Prison on May 24, 2014. He was 28 years old.

On the night of May 24, 2014, Muslim H. allegedly smashed a window pane in his cell in order to injure himself, according to the prison staff. When the guards tried to intervene, Muslim H. allegedly threatened them with a shard of glass and injured two people in the process. Eight men then brought the refugee from Kosovo to the ground using “direct force”. He collapsed due to the excessive force and suffered a cardiac arrest. Resuscitation attempts were initially successful, but Muslim H. later succumbed to his injuries in Landshut-Achdorf hospital.

www.ari-dok.org

We remember José C., who died of heart failure in the Wehlheiden correctional facility (Kassel) on the 23rd of February, 2013. He was 54 years old. José C. had made an emergency call shortly before his death. Cell neighbors also reported hearing banging noises from José C.'s cell. The alarm light above his cell door was active for an extended period of time. Yet no one came to José C.'s aid. Why the prison guards on duty did not react appropriately to the emergency call is still unclear. José C. was an important witness to the killing of inmate Janusz W. by a fellow inmate a year earlier.

www.hna.de/1; www.hna.de/2; www.hna.de/3

We commemorate a man who was found hanged in the Munich correctional facility on November 26, 2012. The man was held there pending deportation. He was 37 years old. We do not know his name.

www.ari-dok.org

We commemorate a man who was found dead on October 14, 2012 in detention pending deportation at Munich Prison. He was 56 years old. We do not know his name.

www.ari-dok.org

We commemorate Janusz W. who was found dead in his cell in the Wehlheiden prison in Kassel on September 16, 2012. He was soon to be deported to Poland, but was the victim of an act of violence: apparently his cellmate killed him by blunt force injuries.

A judicial scandal developed around the death: Initially, the prison doctor certified a natural cause of death despite obvious traces. The statement by two fellow inmates that loud screams could be heard was also ignored. Only after the autopsy, which revealed massive injuries, was it no longer possible to deny that Janusz W. had been murdered. Already during an earlier stay of the cellmate in the JVA Wehlheiden it was noted in his file that he was psychotic and dangerous. He should not have been locked up, and certainly not together with Janusz W.

It can be assumed that the error was intended to be covered up. In addition to the misrepresentations and untrustworthy statements of those responsible, journalists who had reported on the case were also criminalized. Only five months later, the Spanish Jose C. died in the same prison. He was one of the people who had heard the screams of Janusz W. and thus an important witness in the following trials. Officially, the cause of death is cardiac arrest, but cell neighbors reported hearing a beating.

www.hna.de/1, www.hna.de/2 , www.hna.de/3

We commemorate a person who died of suffocation while awaiting deportation in the Nürnberg detention center on August 17, 2012. He was 50 years old. We have no further information surrounding the person or their death.

www.ari-dok.dewww.ari-dok.org

We commemorate Ousman Sey who died in police custody in Dortmund on July 7, 2012. He was 45 years old. 

Ousman Sey called for an ambulance two times and complained to paramedics that his heart was racing. At the same time, neighbors called the police to report loud noises coming from his apartment. Despite his request to be brought to the hospital for his heart he was brought to the police station instead where he collapsed and died. He was denied necessary emergency medical treatment. The investigation against the police officers responsible has been discontinued. 

polizeigewalt.noblogs.org

We commemorate Barry Bubaker, who on the morning of February 13th, 2012 was found dead in his cell in the hospital of the pre-trial detention center in Hamburg. The refugee from Sierra-Leone had suffered an epileptic seizure and asphyxiated on his vomit. He was 25 years old. 

In Sierra-Leone, Barry Bubaker was abused as a child soldier until he managed to flee at the age of 15. Due to his time in the civil war, he was chronically ill and heavily traumatized. In 2007, he was granted the right of residence in Germany. He was however still forced to live in refugee shelters because he could not find a flat. 

On January 31th, 2012 Barry Bubaker allegedly took part in a fight and was subsequently arrested. The next day, a judge issued an arrest warrant for him on suspicion of assault. After a seizure, on February 2nd, he was transferred to the central hospital, but at no time was it ever questioned whether his physical state was good enough to keep him in custody. The afternoon of February 12th was the last time anyone saw Bubaker alive. 

www.ari-dok.org

We commemorate a man from Algeria who burned to death in his cell in Neumünster Prison on the night of October 21, 2011. He was 36 years old. We do not know his name.

Cellmates heard his cries for help and triggered the fire alarm. According to them, the prison officers only responded ten minutes later. As the door of the cell had warped due to the heat, it could not be opened at first. When the emergency services arrived, the Algerian was already dead.

www.ari-dok.org

We remember the Nigerian Christy Schwundeck, who was shot dead by the police in Frankfurt (Main) on May 19, 2011. She was 39 years old.

Christy Schwundeck was at the job center and asked for the money she was entitled to. When she was asked to leave, she remained seated and insisted on staying until the money due to her was paid out. The Jobcenter employee then called the police. A short time later, the policewoman who had been called fired several shots at Christy Schwundeck from a distance of two meters. The police refused to use pepper spray, according to the public prosecutor's office, as it would have led to “irritated eyes” in a closed room, even in uninvolved persons.

On the day of the shooting, the public prosecutor's office in Frankfurt claimed that it was clearly a case of self-defense. To this day, the circumstances of Christy Schwundeck's death have neither been clarified nor have the public officials involved been held accountable. The Higher Regional Court rejected an application for enforcement by the relatives.

wikipedia.org

We commemorate a refugee from Iran, who on February 8th, 2011 allegedly took his own life in the München-Stadelheim prison. Before that he had spent two months in custody waiting to be deported. We unfortunately do not know his name. 

The man was supposed to be deported to Bulgaria because as per the Dublin Regulation, it was the country in charge of his asylum request. 

www.ari-dok.org

We commemorate a man with Polish citizenship whose name we do not know. On July 10, 2010, the 32-year-old man died in Tonna Prison.

After allegedly rioting in his cell, the man had previously been handcuffed and placed in the video-monitored “specially secured detention room” (BGH). After his arrival, he was examined by a paramedic and no abnormalities were found. He was then kept shackled in the BGH for over twelve hours in very high outside temperatures of up to 35 degrees Celsius. He was not ventilated or cooled and was not given enough to drink.

After 12 hours, he stopped moving. Only then was the emergency doctor called. He was admitted to the hospital in Bad Langensalza, where he died shortly afterwards. At the end of July 2010, the ministry announced that he had died of a “serious dysregulation of body temperature”, i.e. overheating, and that a connection with the conditions of detention could not be ruled out. A year and a half later, all proceedings were dropped and no charges were ever brought.

www.gefangenensolijena.noblogs.org

We commemorate Slawik C. who was found hanged in the Hanover-Langenhagen detention center on July 2, 2010. He was 58 years old. 

The Armenian man fled to Germany with his wife and son from Azerbaijan in 1999 after another son died in an unknown manner during military service. Their asylum request was rejected in 2003, after which they continued to live in Germany with a temporary deportation reprieve. During a visit to immigration offices to extend their deportation reprieve, Slawik C. was taken into deportation custody on June 28, 2010. 

He was scheduled to be deported on July 7, 2010 without his wife to Armenia, although he came from Azerbaijan. Immigration officials confused his file with that of another man, and requested a replacement passport for him from the Armenian embassy using the other man’s information. After Slawik C.’s death the immigration office attempted to deport his widow, which was prevented by friends, neighbors and local politicians. On October 6, 2011, the federal court ruled that Slawik C.’s detention was unlawful.

www.ari-dok.org

We commemorate Yeni P., who was found hanged in Hamburg's Hahnöfersand prison on April 16, 2010. She was 34 years old.

Yeni P. moved from Indonesia to Germany in 1996. Her asylum applications were rejected several times. In 2010, she was first remanded in custody for violating the Residence Act and then sent to the women's prison in Hahnöfersand - in preparation for her deportation. The fear of her imminent deportation drove her to her death.

www.ari-dok.org

We remember David M., who was found dead in the central hospital of the Holstenglacis remand prison in Hamburg on March 7, 2010. He was 17 years old.

He is said to have taken his own life with a torn bed sheet tied to the window bars.
Together with two other asylum seekers, the Georgian citizen wanted to apply for asylum on February 7, 2010. All three were then arrested by the police and detained for “illegal residence”. As a comparison of fingerprints revealed that David M. had previously applied for asylum in both Poland and Switzerland, he was ordered to be detained pending deportation under the Dublin II Agreement. The “deportation” was to take place on March 9, 2010.

David M. had already started a hunger strike on February 17, 2010 in protest against his imprisonment; a psychologist attested that he was at increased risk of self-harm or imminent suicide. The prison then introduced “special security measures” including video surveillance. On February 25, David M. was finally transferred to the central hospital of the pre-trial detention facility because his state of health had deteriorated significantly due to his hunger strike. Here, too, the “special security measures” were to be continued. However, no one checked the video surveillance monitor between 11:30 and 15:50 on March 7, 2010. During this time, David M. died of “suicide”, according to the authorities.

www.ari-dok.org

We commemorate Slieman Hamade, who was killed by Berlin police officers on February 28, 2010. He was 32 years old.

On the evening of February 28, 2010, Slieman Hamade was very upset because of loud music from his neighbors. To avoid a conflict between him and his neighbors, his family members called the police. The police arrived and forcibly removed Slieman Hamade from the apartment.

When he tried to return there, three police officers tied him up, kicked him, pushed him down and abused him with pepper spray, which was sprayed directly into his mouth and nose. He died a short time later as a result of this massive use of force. The investigation into the police officers involved was discontinued shortly afterwards.

www.kop-berlin.de

We commemorate Mahmud O., who was found hanged in the Nürnberg detention center on August 21, 2009. He was 26 years old. 

The Iraqi citizen came to Germany when he was 18 years old and was recognized as a refugee the following year. At that point he was given an international travel document and a residence permit. This status was then revoked on January 20, 2006 by the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees. On May 7, 2007 he received a temporary reprieve from deportation and moved into a group home for refugees. He became depressed and went for neurological treatment which included psychotropic drugs which were also administered in custody.

Although the judge and the prison management were aware of Mahmud O.'s psychological problems, the prison management claimed after his death that neither the doctor nor the prison psychologist had seen any evidence of a "suicide" risk. In the cell in which Mahmud O. was found dead, he had spent 23 hours a day locked in solitary confinement. Witnesses confirm he made requests to be transferred to a shared cell; the prison denies having received these requests. 

www.ari-dok.org

We commemorate a young man who did not survive detention pending deportation in Rottenburg (Baden-Württemberg). We do not know his name or his exact age. He was due to be deported to Turkey and was terrified. He was found hanged.

www.ari-dok.org

We commemorate D. V. Q., who allegedly hanged himself in Bautzen Prison on October 14, 2014. He was 40 years old.

The refugee from Vietnam had been arrested a few days earlier during a raid on refugee accommodation because he had no valid identity papers. D. V. Q. was very afraid of being deported and was in a mentally unstable state. Despite this, he was taken into custody pending deportation. There he is said to have strangled himself in a toilet.

www.ari-dok.org

We commemorate David Sargarian who died in the Nuremberg detention center from medical neglect. He was 23 years old. 

The pre-trial detainee from Armenia cut himself deeply on both arms with a razor blade in his cell during the night. He then called for help by pressing the emergency alarm button in his cell. Two guards saw the bleeding man through his cell door, but left again. It was twenty minutes before two paramedics arrived. The severely injured man was only given provisional care in the prison infirmary, after which he was to be transferred to a “cell with no dangerous objects.” He lost consciousness on his way to the cell. When an emergency doctor arrived ten minutes later he was already dead. The autopsy declared that he died from blood loss. 

His parents filed a criminal complaint against the prison officials and medical staff for, among other things, negligent homicide and failure to provide assistance. The public prosecutor brought charges against a prison doctor and a nurse, both of whom were ultimately acquitted. 

www.ari-dok.org

We commemorate Ibourahima K., who was found dead in the juvenile wing of the Oslebshausen detention center in Bremen. He is said to have hanged himself in his cell. He was 16 years old. 

Ibourahima K. came to Germany from the Ivory Coast when he was 14. His asylum application was rejected. He received a temporary reprieve from deportation, but received hardly any support. When he turned 16 he was evicted from the small apartment he was temporarily living in with his German girlfriend. He did not report to the adult dormitory to which he was assigned. On November 1, 2007 Ibourahima K. was arrested in front of the Bremen train station, and sentenced to prison time for a variety of offences. On July 15, 2008 he died in prison. 

www.ari-dok.org

We comemmorate Adem Özdamar, who died on March 5, 2008 in a hospital in Hagen after falling into a coma during a police operation on February 27, 2008. He was 26 years old.

Adem Özdamar had called the police on the night of February 17, 2008 because he felt threatened. The officers took him to the police station. He is said to have panicked there. A police officer used pepper spray on him. Adem Özdamar was then handcuffed and strapped to a stretcher while lying on his stomach. He is said to have remained in this position for at least fifteen minutes. An emergency doctor who was called determined that Adem Özdamar was no longer breathing. It took several minutes for the officers to release all the restraints. After twenty minutes, the doctor managed to revive Adem Özdamar. However, he fell into a coma and died in hospital on March 5, 2008.

The cause of death has not yet been clarified. The public prosecutor's office ruled out so-called positional asphyxiation. A forensic pathologist found hematomas on Adem Özdamar's face that indicated “blunt force trauma”. On behalf of the family, a radiologist examined the x-rays and CT scans taken at the hospital and diagnosed a fracture of the nasal bone. However, this was not confirmed in the autopsy ordered by the public prosecutor's office. The Özdamar family's lawyer had doubts about the impartiality of the responsible public prosecutor's office and tried to get another public prosecutor's office to take over the investigation. His request was rejected, however, and an action to compel the prosecution also failed. The investigation against the police officers involved was closed in June 2008. Adem Özdamar's death did not result in any disciplinary consequences. According to the official account, he died of cerebral edema.

www.amnesty.de

We commemorate Mohamed M., who was found hanged in the pre-deportation prison Berlin-Köpenick on December 30th 2007. He died of his injuries two days later. He was 28 years old.

The man from Tunisia had previously been transferred from the prison and admitted to Hedwigshöhe Hospital for a Psychiatric evaluation due to various worrisome behaviours. The attending Psychologists recommended that he return if his condition were to worsen. Ignoring this recommendation, Mohamed M. was not given any form of support by the prison´s psychologist or social worker.

www.ari-dok.org

We commemorate a Russian-German person who was shot dead by a police officer in Löhne on October 2, 2007. He was 33 years old. We do not know his name.

The police tried to take the man, who was in a state of mental distress, into custody at his home. According to the police he defended himself with a knife. A police officer opened fire and fatally shot the man.

www.augsburger-allgemeine.de