All criminal prosecution of police officers who violently assaulted people at the 2017 G20 summit in Hamburg came to nothing and no charges were brought. The last investigation was closed despite compelling evidence.
The term “police violence” is a “defamatory term” that he rejects “very clearly”, said Andy Grote, the Social Democratic Senator for the Interior, who is still in office, in the Committee on Home Affairs shortly after the G20 summit in Hamburg. Previously, the then mayor of Hamburg, Olaf Scholz, also a Social Democrat and now Chancellor, had coined the same narrative: “There was no police violence,” Scholz told NDR when asked about the action taken against the protest by tens of thousands of people in the first week of July 2017.
Last week, the Hamburg Public Prosecutor General’s Office dropped its latest investigation into assault in office against G20 police officers, reports the Hanseatic city’s “Mopo” newspaper. These investigations related to an incident on 8 July 2017, in which a police unit from Baden-Württemberg beat up a peaceful group without warning and broke the fibula of educator Lola D. with a baton. The group had put their motto “I’d rather dance than G20” into practice in the Schanzenviertel neighbourhood. The music system they had brought with them was also vandalised by the police, as can be seen on a video.
The brutal attack on the dancing group was also reported on the G20-Doku website, where activists have documented a three-digit number of other cases of excessive police violence: Police officers indiscriminately bludgeoned and beat demonstrators, partygoers and residents, used water cannons, pepper spray, rubber bullets and even tear gas on a massive scale, despite contrary instructions.
The Hamburg Left Party parliamentary group had already asked about the prosecution of excessive police violence at the G20 summit in a major parlamentarian enquiry in 2020. Accordingly, proceedings were initiated in 169 cases, 133 of which were for assault in office. However, none of these proceedings had yet led to a prosecution – except in one case in which a police officer had “slightly injured a colleague’s finger” in a detention centre while snatching a pepper spray canister and was therefore cautioned.
“The fact that offenders in uniform go unpunished is a blatant deficit in the rule of law and undermines trust in the entire police force,” said Cansu Özdemir, the spokesperson for domestic policy for the Die Linke parliamentary group in the Hamburg parliament, to “nd”. With his declaration that there had been no police violence, Olaf Scholz had “protectively placed himself in front of such thugs”. According to Özdemir, this emphasises the inadequacy of internal investigations into police violence.
The finally archived case from 8 July 2017 appears to confirm this criticism. Although the public prosecutor’s office was able to identify three officers from an Evidence Preservation and Arrest Unit (BFE) from Baden-Württemberg as suspected perpetrators, they refused to testify. Their superior claims not to be able to recognise his officers on videos. As a result, the case was dropped, reopened the following year and dropped again. However, “after examining the factual and legal situation”, the police paid the victim compensation of €4,770 plus legal fees “as material and immaterial damages”.
A third case was brought against the three officers in 2022, after the lawyer of the injured Lola D. had urged this. It was only at this point that the public prosecutor’s office confiscated the suspects’ mobile phones and computers and actually found incriminating evidence five years after the assault.
On the mobile phone of one of the accused police officers, the forensic experts were able to recover a G20 summit picture with the words “Hunt and no mercy”. In chats, the then 28-year-old is also said to have bragged that he had “dealt out a good hand” in Hamburg. Further chats had “confirmed the suspicion” that the man was the G20 perpetrator.
According to “Mopo”, even the Hamburg Public Prosecutor General’s Office came to the conclusion that the accused officer “used violence at the G20 summit and took pleasure in it” and certified that he had a “highly problematic attitude to duty”. However, this evidence was not sufficient for the judicial authorities to bring charges in court.
The BFE unit, which is responsible for investigating the officer, also attested to his high propensity for violence, inhuman behaviour and a racist attitude, reports the “Mopo” from the files. In other chats, the accused described himself as a “racist”. The Ministry of the Interior in Baden-Württemberg does not provide information on whether the police officer was at least disciplined for this, citing data protection.
In contrast to the impunity of the police, the will to prosecute G20 summit opponents is unbroken: 964 proceedings have already been brought against 1286 activists or bystanders, with no end in sight. The third so-called Rondenbarg trial for aggravated breach of the peace, which according to the Public Prosecutor’s Office was committed as a “joint offence” without any criminal act being attributed to the defendants, is due to begin on 18 January. A total of 85 people are to be charged in the Rondenbarg complex.
Published in German in „nd“.
Image: G20-Doku.
