Oury Jalloh, 07.01.2005. Died in a fire tied to the mattress alone in his cell – Dessau

Oury Jalloh, originally from Sierra Leone, was arrested on 7 January 2005 by police in Dessau, Saxony-Anhalt, for alleged public disturbances. He was taken into custody and placed in Cell No. 5 of the police station, where he was handcuffed and restrained on a fireproof mattress. Hours later, firefighters responding to an emergency call discovered his body burnt beyond recognition.

The police version

The official narrative provided by authorities claimed that Jalloh had somehow set himself on fire with a lighter, despite being bound and under constant surveillance. This explanation has been fiercely contested, with critics pointing to inconsistent evidence, overlooked forensic findings and conflicting witness statements.

In the morning of 7 January 2005, at about 08:00 am, some street cleaners called the police and reported that a female colleague felt threatened by a drunk man (who was Oury Jalloh). When two policemen (Hans-Ulrich M. and Udo S.) arrived, Jalloh declined to show his identification and then resisted arrest. The officers put him in a headlock and took him into custody, intending to book him for harassment although charges were never made.

At the police station, the two policemen took Jalloh to the basement and held him whilst a doctor took his blood to test for alcohol and drugs. The test showed a BAC of about 3‰ and indicated usage of cocaine. The doctor assessed Jalloh as safe to be locked up. Jalloh was taken to a cell and held until he could be seen by a judge. Two officers dragged him to a cell and handcuffed him to a bed by his hands and feet.

Policewoman Beate H. was working in the second floor control room, together with Andreas S., her superior. On the intercom she heard Jalloh rattling his chains and swearing, so she attempted to calm him and she reports later she heard other officers in the cell. She went to check on him herself at about 11:30 am, without noting anything unusual. She returned to the control room, where Andreas S. turned down the intercom volume and she told him to turn it back up. At around noon she claimed she heard splashing sounds and told Andreas S. it was his turn to check. She originally said that after the fire alarm went off, Andreas S. turned it off twice. When another different alarm went off, he went to check what was going on. Gerhard M. followed Andreas S. downstairs to the cells, where they found Jalloh alive but burning to death. His final word was “Fire“.

The police suggested that Jalloh had burnt himself to death, using a lighter to ignite the foam mattress he was lying on in the cell. One appeared in an evidence bag several days after Jalloh‘s death.

The Justice version

The official autopsy concluded that the immediate cause of death was likely heat shock to Jalloh‘s lungs by smoke inhalation. A later 2019 autopsy conducted by experts from Goethe University after being commissioned by Jalloh‘s family, found that he had a broken rib, a broken nose and a fracture at the base of his skull, indicating that Oury Jalloh may have been tortured before his death. The original autopsy had listed only a recent nose fracture. The doctors were convinced that the injuries had occurred before death.

In March 2007, a trial was opened at the state court of Dessau against police officers Hans-Ulrich M. and his superior, Andreas S. The two officers were charged for causing bodily harm with fatal consequences, and for involuntary manslaughter, respectively. On 8 December 2008 the court acquitted both defendants of all charges. According to Manfred Steinhoff, the presiding judge, contradictory testimony had prevented clarification of the circumstances and had obstructed due process. In his closing speech Steinhoff accused the police officers of lying in court and thus damaging the reputation of the state of Saxony-Anhalt. The trial had thrown up inconsistencies and gaps in the narrative of the police officers and had lasted 60 days instead of the scheduled four. Fire experts had been unable to recreate the means of death. The issue of how the lighter that had allegedly been used to start the fire got into the cell was unexplained. Beate H. changed her initial report to say that Andreas S. had not turned down the fire alarm twice but rather got up and went downstairs, but she was unable to say exactly when because she worked with her back facing the door. The family and supporters of Jalloh were outraged by the verdict. The family had been offered €5,000 by the court since it could not establish the guilt of the officers, but Jalloh‘s father said he did not want the money.

On 7 January 2010, exactly five years after Jalloh died in his cell, the Bundesgerichtshof federal court in Karlsruhe overturned the earlier verdict. The case was relegated to the state court of Saxony-Anhalt at Magdeburg for retrial. During the investigations the deaths of Hans-Jürgen Rose (died from internal injuries hours after being released from the same police building in 1997) and Mario Bichtemann (died from an unsupervised skull fracture in the same cell in 2002) were re-examined. In 2012, Andreas S. was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter and fined €10,800. A new trial then began in 2014 and ended without any convictions in 2017.

In August 2020 the Landtag of Saxony-Anhalt published a report by special investigators Jerzy Montag and Manfred Nötzel on the Jalloh case, calling the policemen’s actions “flawed” and “contrary to the law“. However, they concluded that the district attorney’s final dismissal of the case in 2017 was “factually and legally correct in view of available evidence“.