Sidy Dramé, brother of the killed Mouhamed Dramé, in front of the courtroom after the verdict
Photo: dpa/Rolf Vennenbernd
In Dortmund, the criminal trial against five police officers who stood before the regional court for the killing of the Senegalese refugee Mouhamed Dramé ended on Thursday with complete acquittals. The defendants were the 55-year-old operations manager Thorsten H. and the four officers Jeanine Denise B., Markus B. (both 34), Pia Katharina B. (29) and Fabian S. (31). The presiding judge Thomas Kelm recognized their action as self-defense because the police officers had perceived the future victim as dangerous.
Drama was killed with a submachine gun by Fabian S. on August 8, 2022 in the garden of the St. Elisabeth youth welfare facility on Missundestrasse in Dortmund's Nordstadt – at 4:47 p.m., just 2 minutes after the emergency call from a supervisor. The trial confirmed what was already obvious at the time: the person shot was suicidal and found himself in an exceptional psychological situation. This was a “static situation” in police jargon, as Dramé burned to death in a niche and held a kitchen knife to his stomach.
Nevertheless, the squad of eleven officers chased the young man out of his corner of the garden. Officer Jeanine Denise B. used pepper spray. Even senior public prosecutor Carsten Dombert and public prosecutor Gülkiz Yazir emphasized in their pleas a week ago that Dramé's only chance of escape after using the irritant was in the direction of the officers. None of the witnesses from the facility confirmed that Dramé was “running” or attempting to attack with the knife. The police spread this lie immediately after the crime, and the North Rhine-Westphalian Interior Minister Herbert Reul (CDU) then repeated it.
Despite the obvious lack of attack, officers Markus B. and Pia Katharina B. used their Tasers, both of which hit, but only one triggered the circuit. Just 0.771 seconds later, the “safety shooter” fired six shots, five of which hit Dramé. The victim fell to the ground, convulsing in pain, but was still restrained with handcuffs. A supervisor at the youth welfare facility reported that the operations manager lightly kicked Dramé while he was lying on the ground. Dramès' death was finally confirmed at the hospital at 6:02 p.m.
The trial against the five officers began on December 19, 2023 in Hall 130 of the Dortmund Regional Court. In the 51 weeks until the verdict, Judge Kelm scheduled 30 trial days and heard a good dozen witnesses and experts. Among them were six emergency services who were involved on August 8, 2022, but were not charged by the public prosecutor.
The brothers Sidy and Lassana Dramé appeared as co-plaintiffs in the trial and were represented by the Dortmund lawyer Lisa Grüter. Criminologist Thomas Feltes was also part of the team until the summer. The co-plaintiff attempted to correctly present the self-defense situation claimed by the defendants as a defense strategy. Sidy, Mouhamed's older brother, cried as the verdict was announced. “We have lost the fight,” say WDR reporters.
The defense even described Dramé's movements after the shots, when he was seriously injured and brought his hands to the wounds, as “defensive” and “unruly.”
The defense focused, among other things, on delegitimizing witnesses who were accused of making contradictory statements. One of the arguments was that lethal force was necessary to prevent suicide. In the end, it was the person who was killed who was to blame because he “behaved wrongly.” The defense even described Dramé's movements after the shots, when he was seriously injured and brought his hands to the wounds, as “defensive” and “unruly.”
The self-victimization of the accused police officers was supported by the media. The shooter credibly emphasized in court how much he suffered from the events and apologized to his relatives. In a podcast on WDR and a mean report on Spiegel TV, he was also given a lot of space to portray the event as if it were an accident. The deadly violence does not appear to be a mistake on the part of the police, but rather inevitable.
In a statement, the Justice4Mouhamed solidarity group, which accompanied the trial on every day of the trial, criticized structural racism in the police. A “shooting bias” leads to fatal mistakes that particularly affect people with a migration history, mental health crises or poverty. In addition, the false portrayal of Dramé as an aggressive “knife perpetrator” reinforced racist prejudices and added further pain to the Dramé family. The solidarity group also points out that the criminal complaint against the head of operations, Thorsten H., is below the threshold for loss of civil servant status.
»Today's verdict will not help prevent deadly police operations in the future. “On the contrary, the verdict is a signal to the police: You can carry on as before, there are no consequences for fatal shots,” criticized Britta Rabe, who observed the trial for the Committee for Fundamental Rights and Democracy, on Thursday.
The process also reveals contradictions. It became clear that Dramé, described as a youth, could hardly have been 16 years old, as his papers stated, but rather in his early or mid-20s. The inconsistencies also include the fact that Pia B., who triggered one of the Tasers on the day of the operation as a mentor to a young commissioner candidate, who, however, was not charged. In a chat, she advised him that he should “not explain why we were made” in his statement and leave further statements to the operations manager, Thorsten H..
B. had also exchanged chat messages with H. and, for example, discussed the summons to interrogate two other officers. The operations manager offered to help the two prepare. Immediately afterwards there was a meeting between Dortmund police chief Gregor Lange and the officers involved in the operation. This meeting prompted the public prosecutor's office to seize the cell phones of the five accused on September 14, 2022 – five weeks after the crime – and to examine SMS and chat histories for evidence of collusion or witness influence. However, this data was not included in the negotiations – Judge Kelm ordered that the parties should take note of it in the so-called self-reading procedure.
One of the judge's controversial decisions also included a ban on the use of evidence for the defendant's first statements that they made to the Recklinghausen police who were investigating at the time. According to the reasoning, the five officers were listed as witnesses instead of as accused and were therefore incorrectly instructed before the questioning. However, chat messages from Markus B. suggest that the officers knew that they were considered suspects.
In Germany, the majority of investigations into bodily harm in office by police officers end in nothing. This was recently proven by the study “Violence in Office” published by Laila Abdul-Rahman, Hannah Espín Grau, Luise Klaus and Tobias Singelnstein. Accordingly, charges were only brought in 2.3 percent of cases in 2021. The public prosecutor's office discontinues 93 percent of the proceedings on the grounds that there is a lack of sufficient suspicion. Even when charges are brought, convictions remain rare. In 2021, of 80 accused officers, only 27 were found guilty – a conviction rate of 34 percent; in other criminal proceedings this is 81 percent.
The authors of the study point to, among other things, problematic evidence as a reason for this special criminal status. In these proceedings, the statements of those affected and those accused often contrast with each other. The judiciary likes to believe the police – the criminal lawyer Lukas Theune speaks of “professional witnesses”. As in the case of Mouhamed Dramé, the investigations that are mandatory after a fatal shooting are also conducted by police officers – a clear conflict of interest, because the police and public prosecutor's office work together.
The Dortmund judgment is not yet legally binding. An appeal by the Federal Court of Justice in Karlsruhe is possible upon request.
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