After nearly a year of deliberations, the Dortmund regional court‘s verdict delivered on Thursday (December 12) was met with incomprehension by the relatives and members of the public. The five police officers who were involved in the shooting of Senegalese teenager Mouhamed Lamine Dramé had been acting in self-defense, the judge, Thomas Kelm, said.

The 16-year-old died in August, 2022, after being shot six times by a police officer with a submachine gun at a Catholic youth welfare facility. Police said he had approached them holding a knife with which he had been threatening to take his own life.

Police chief Gregor Lange said he was relieved at the acquittals. "Dramé’s death was a tragedy for the family, which is a great burden on my employees and me," he told the press. 

After the verdict was announced, there were protests in the courtroom, with people calling: "Justice for Mouhamed!" The Mouhamed Solidarity Group and the Fundamental Rights Committee (Grundrechtekomitee), a non-profit rights organization, said they were "stunned, angry and sad." The verdict was proof of the "complete lack of acceptance of responsibility," they said.

'We lost the fight'

Mouhamed’s older brother Sidy, cried as the judgment was read out. "We lost the fight," he told reporters from German public radio, WDR.

Sidy and another brother, Lassana Dramé, who appeared as co-plaintiffs in the case, said they would appeal to the Federal Court of Justice, and the public prosecutor’s office will also now examine the ruling.

The verdict was especially difficult for Mouhamed’s family, said Dortmund lawyer Lisa Grüter, because no one was being held accountable for the young man’s death. Grüter, who is representing the co-plaintiffs in a civil action, accuses the police of "structural racism" and "shooting bias," a phenomenon said to reflect prejudice against migrants, people in poverty and homelessness or those with psychological problems.

A campaign group, Justice4Mouhamed, says Dramé was in a psychiatric emergency situation and was at risk of self-harming, and the police could have used alternative methods to deal with the situation.

Read AlsoGerman police face trial over fatal shooting of asylum seeker

No common language

The death of Dramé made headlines in Germany, coming amid national debate about racist violence among police. During the incident, the five officers used pepper spray and tasers on the young man when he tried to run away, before one fired six shots at him, two of them fatal, according to reports.

At Thursday’s trial, Justice Kelm refered to the fact that Mouhamed Dramé understood only Spanish and French, and had not reacted when the police first spoke to him. The officers "could not have known what was going on in the youth’s head," he said.

While the evidence suggested that the young man had "not planned an attack," the officers had been right in assuming that there was a threat, the judge concluded.

Verdict 'lenient' 

Britta Rabe, who observed the trial on behalf of the Fundamental Rights Committee, warned that the verdict would not help to prevent police shooting in the future. It sends the message that "you can carry on as before. A fatal shooting has no consesquences," Rabe said.

German social scientist and expert on policing and criminology, Rafael Behr, described the court’s decision as "very lenient… Personally, I would have felt it would have been better and fairer if the head of police operations had at least been sentenced to a symbolic punishment, as the public prosecutor was demanding," Behr told the news agency EPD.

Protestors gathered in Dortmund on Thursday after the court delivered its verdict. Around 300 people joined a march through the streets, blocking traffic. Flares or fireworks were set off by protestors and some were "uncooperative and at times verbally aggressive," police said.

Justice4Mouhamed has announced further demonstrations this Saturday.

With EPD, dpa