After a year of trial, five police officers in Dortmund have been acquitted. The court recognised Mouhamed Dramé’s jumping up as self-defence-situation for the defendants – even though the victim was forced to do so by them.
In the German city of Dortmund, the criminal trial against five police officers who were on trial for the killing of Senegalese refugee Mouhamed Dramé ended on Thursday with full acquittals. The 55-year-old commander Thorsten H. and the four officers Jeanine Denise B., Markus B. (both 34), Pia Katharina B. (29) and Fabian S. (31) were on trial. The presiding judge, Thomas Kelm, recognised that their actions constituted self-defence, as the police officers perceived the subsequent victim as dangerous.
Dramé was killed by Fabian S. with a submachine gun in the garden of the St. Elisabeth youth welfare facility in Missundestraße in Dortmund’s Nordstadt district on 8 August 2022 – at 4.47 pm, just 22 minutes after an emergency call from a care worker. The trial confirmed what was already obvious at the time: the man who was shot was suicidal and in an exceptional psychological situation. This was a ‘static situation’ in police jargon, as Dramé was crouching in an alcove and holding a kitchen knife in front of his stomach.
Nevertheless, the squad of eleven officers chased the young man out of the corner of this garden. Officer Jeanine Denise B. used pepper spray for this. Even senior public prosecutor Carsten Dombert and public prosecutor Gülkiz Yazir emphasised in their pleadings a week ago that Dramé’s only escape option after using the irritant was in the direction of the officers. None of the witnesses from the centre confirmed that Dramé had ‘run’ or attempted to attack with the knife. The police spread this lie immediately after the crime, and North Rhine-Westphalia’s Interior Minister Herbert Reul (Christian Democratic Union, CDU) subsequently repeated it.
Despite the apparent non-attack, officers Markus B. and Pia Katharina B. used their tasers, both of which hit, but only one of which triggered the circuit. Just 0.771 seconds later, the ‘security 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 carer at the youth welfare facility reported that the officer in charge had lightly kicked Dramé while he was lying on the ground. Dramé was eventually found dead in hospital at 6.02 pm.
On 19 December 2023, the trial against the five officers began in courtroom 130 of Dortmund Regional Court. In the 51 weeks leading up to the judgement, Judge Kelm scheduled 30 trial days and heard a good dozen witnesses and expert witnesses. Among them were six police officers who were involved on 8 August 2022 but were not charged by the Public Prosecutor’s Office.
The brothers Sidy and Lassana Dramé appeared as co-plaintiffs at the trial and were represented by Dortmund lawyer Lisa Grüter. Criminologist Thomas Feltes was also part of the team until the summer. The joint plaintiff tried to correctly present the self-defence situation claimed by the defendants as a defence strategy. Sidy, Mouhamed’s older brother, cried during the announcement of the judgement. ‘We lost the fight,’ he told WDR reporters.
Among other things, the defence resorted to delegitimising witnesses, who were accused of making contradictory statements. One of the arguments was that the lethal force was necessary to prevent a suicide. In the end, the person killed was to blame because he had ‘misbehaved’. The defence even interpreted Dramé’s movements after the shots, when he was seriously injured and brought his hands to his wounds, as ‘defensive’ and ‘unruly’.
The self-victimisation of the accused police officers was supported by the media. The shooter credibly emphasised in court how much he suffered from the events and apologised to his relatives. In a podcast by WDR and a scurrilous report by Spiegel TV, however, he was also given plenty of space to portray the events as an accident. The fatal violence does not appear to be a mistake on the part of the police, but rather unavoidable.
In a statement, the Justice4Mouhamed solidarity group, which accompanied the trial on every day of the hearing, criticised structural racism in the police force. A ‘shooting bias’ leads to fatal errors that particularly affect people with a history of migration, mental health crises or poverty. In addition, the misrepresentation of Dramé as an aggressive ‘knife offender’ has reinforced racist prejudices and caused further pain to the Dramé family, they say. The solidarity group also points out that the criminal complaint against the officer in charge, Thorsten H., is below the threshold for loss of civil servant status.
‘Today’s judgement will not help to prevent fatal police operations in the future. On the contrary, the verdict is a signal to the police: you can carry on as before, there will be no consequences for fatal shootings,’ criticised Britta Rabe, who observed the trial for the Committee for Fundamental Rights and Democracy, on Thursday.
The trial also brought contradictions to light. For example, it became clear that Dramé, who was described as a teenager, could hardly have been 16 years old, as stated in his papers, but rather in his early or mid-20s. The inconsistencies also include the fact that Pia B., who had triggered one of the Tasers, acted as a mentor to a young trainee police officer on the day of the operation, who was not charged. In a chat, she advised him that he should ‘not explain why we did what’ in his statement and leave any further statements to Thorsten H., the officer in charge of the operation.
B. had also exchanged chat messages with H. and discussed, for example, the summons to question two other officers. The head of operations offered to help them prepare. Immediately afterwards, there was a meeting between Dortmund police chief Gregor Lange and the officers involved in the operation. This meeting prompted the senior Public Prosecutor’s Office to seize the mobile phones of the five accused on 14 September 2022 – five weeks after the crime – and to examine text messages and chat histories for evidence of collusion or witness tampering. However, this data was not included in the proceedings – Judge Kelm ordered the parties to take note of it in a so-called self-reading procedure.
One of the judge’s controversial decisions was that the defendants’ initial statements to the Recklinghausen police, who were investigating the case at the time, should not be used as evidence. The five officers were listed as witnesses instead of defendants and had therefore been wrongly instructed before the interrogation, according to the reasoning. However, chat messages from Markus B. suggest that the officers could have known that they were considered suspects.
In Germany, the majority of investigations into assault in office by police officers end in nothing. This was recently confirmed by the study ‘Gewalt im Amt’ (Violence in Office) published by Laila Abdul-Rahman, Hannah Espín Grau, Luise Klaus and Tobias Singelnstein. According to the study, charges were only brought in 2.3 per cent of cases in 2021. Public prosecutors dropped 93 per cent of cases on the grounds that there was insufficient suspicion. Even if charges are brought, convictions remain rare. In 2021, only 27 out of 80 accused officers were found guilty – a conviction rate of 34 per cent, compared to 81 per cent in other criminal proceedings.
The authors of the study point to a problematic evidence situation as one of the reasons for this special status under criminal law. In such proceedings, the statements of the victim and the accused often contradict each other. The judiciary is happy to believe the police – criminal law expert Lukas Theune refers to this as ‘professional witnesses’. As in the case of Mouhamed Dramé, the mandatory investigations initiated after a fatal shooting are also conducted by police officers – a clear conflict of interest, as the police and the Public Prosecutor’s Office work together.
The judgement in Dortmund is not yet legally binding. An appeal by the Federal Court of Justice in Karlsruhe is possible upon request.
The five defendants in the Dortmund police trial
The 55-year-old officer-in-charge Thorsten H. was originally accused of inciting subordinates to commit grievous bodily harm. Among other things, H. had told the later shooter that he was the ‘last man standing’ with his submachine gun. The aim had been to render Dramé ‘incapable of fighting’, he explained in court. His fatal order was therefore to ‘Advance, pepper in, the full programme, the whole bottle!’. He defended his actions in court on the grounds that the situation was ‘dynamic’ – however, a police directive in North Rhine-Westphalia states that Tasers should not be used in such situations. In court, H. also explained that bodycams were not permitted in the initial situation because Dramé was suicidal – also a police directive. When the pepper spray was finally used, allegedly no one had had time to switch on the cameras. H. said that it was not unusual for him to delete chats about presumed agreements with other witnesses on his mobile phone, as he did this regularly. In its closing statement last week, the Public Prosecutor’s Office demanded a prison sentence of ten months, suspended for two years, and a fine of €5,000 in favour of a social institution in Dortmund.
Jeanine Denise B., 34 years old, had used pepper spray against Dramé and was initially charged with grievous bodily harm. She had acted on instructions and emphasised that her view was obstructed by bushes. According to the Public Prosecutor’s Office, her pepper spray triggered the escalation of violence. Nevertheless, they had requested an acquittal for B. and argued that the officer credibly assumed a self-defence situation due to a ‘mistake in the facts of the case’.
Markus B., also 34, who used the Taser, was on trial for causing grievous bodily harm at the beginning of the trial. He explained that he had made the decision to use the Taser on his own authority because he interpreted Dramé’s behaviour as a danger to himself and his colleagues. At the same time, however, he used racially charged arguments by describing ‘muscle parts’ on the fugitive’s upper body as an indication of ‘aggressive behaviour’ – even though Mouhamed was sitting quietly in a corner at the time. Markus B. later admitted that there had been enough time to resolve the situation differently. The Public Prosecutor’s Office had also requested an acquittal for him, as he had also succumbed to an ‘error in authorisation’.
Pia Katharina B., 29, also used a Taser and was initially charged with grievous bodily harm in the line of duty. In the courtroom, she emphasised: ‘Mouhamed was not an attacker for us’. However, she also said that she assumed a self-defence situation and that Dramé could have used the knife against her. In its closing statement, the Public Prosecutor’s Office also demanded an acquittal for B., as she mistakenly assumed a self-defence situation.
At the beginning of the trial, 31-year-old Fabian S., the so-called backup shooter, was supposed to be convicted of manslaughter. He described in court that other measures such as pepper spray and Taser had not been sufficient, which is why he intervened with his submachine gun and fired five shots from an MP5 at Dramé. ‘Now it’s my turn’, he thought as Dramé stood up from his alcove with a knife in his hand and ran towards the officers. However, the Public Prosecutor’s Office ultimately requested an acquittal for Fabian S. due to an erroneous assumption of a self-defence situation.
Published in German in „nd“ (1 | 2).
Image: The five police officers on trial for the killing of Senegalese refugee Mouhamed Dramé (Matthias Monroy).
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