Torture by Police, Forced Disappearance & Other Ill Treatment In the early years of the 21st Century, 2000 to
2025 gvnet.com/torture/Germany.htm
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CAUTION: The following links
have been culled from the web to illuminate the situation in Germany. Some of these links may lead to websites that
present allegations that are unsubstantiated or even false. No attempt
has been made to validate their authenticity or to verify their content. HOW TO USE THIS WEBPAGE Students If you are looking for
material to use in a term-paper, you are advised to scan the postings on this
page and others to see which aspects of Torture by Authorities are of
particular interest to you. You might
be interested in exploring the moral justification for inflicting pain or
inhumane or degrading treatment or punishment in order to obtain critical
information that may save countless lives, or to elicit a confession for a
criminal act, or to punish someone to teach him a lesson outside of the
courtroom. Perhaps your paper might
focus on some of the methods of torture, like fear, extreme temperatures,
starvation, thirst, sleep deprivation, suffocation, or immersion in freezing
water. On the other hand, you might
choose to write about the people acting in an official capacity who
perpetrate such cruelty. There is a
lot to the subject of Torture by Authorities.
Scan other countries as well as this one. Draw comparisons between activity in
adjacent countries and/or regions.
Meanwhile, check out some of the Term-Paper
resources that are available on-line. ***
ARCHIVES *** Council of Europe
anti-torture Committee says Germany needs to ensure better treatment of
foreign nationals being removed by air Executive Summary, 9
May 2019 [accessed 1 June
2020] As regards
immigration detainees placed
in a security
cell, the CPT
once again calls
on the competent authorities
to abolish the prohibition
of outdoor exercise
as a special
security measure and recommends
that these detainees be offered at least one hour of outdoor exercise per
day. They should also be allowed to make phone calls and receive visits. Further,
the privacy of
detainees under video surveillance in these security cells should be
guaranteed, e.g. by pixelating the image of the toilet
area on the
CCTV monitoring screens.
In addition, more
effective self-harm and
suicide prevention measures for
vulnerable detainees should be put in
place, by increasing the availability
of psycho-social support and enhancing contact with the outside world. 2020 Country
Reports on Human Rights Practices: Germany U.S. Dept of State Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and
Labor, 30 March 2021 www.state.gov/reports/2020-country-reports-on-human-rights-practices/germany/
[accessed 21 July
2021] TORTURE AND OTHER
CRUEL, INHUMAN, OR DEGRADING TREATMENT OR PUNISHMENT The constitution
and the law prohibit such practices, but there were a few reports that
government officials employed them. According to some human rights groups,
authorities did not effectively investigate allegations of mistreatment by
police and failed to establish an independent mechanism to investigate such
allegations. The 2019 interim report of a continuing study by researchers at
the University of Bochum estimated police used excessive force in 12,000
cases annually, of which authorities investigated approximately 2,000.
Investigations were discontinued in 90 percent of the cases, and officers
were formally charged in approximately 2 percent of the cases. Less than 1
percent of the cases resulted in conviction of the accused officer. PRISON AND DETENTION
CENTER CONDITIONS Independent
Monitoring: The government permitted monitoring by independent
nongovernmental observers. ARREST PROCEDURES
AND TREATMENT OF DETAINEES Authorities must
have a warrant issued by a judicial authority to arrest an individual. Police
may also arrest individuals they apprehend in the act of committing a crime,
or if they have strong reason to suspect the individual intends to commit a
crime. Freedom House
Country Report 2018 Edition freedomhouse.org/country/germany/freedom-world/2018 [accessed 12 May
2020] F3. IS THERE PROTECTION FROM THE ILLEGITIMATE
USE OF PHYSICAL FORCE AND FREEDOM FROM WAR AND INSURGENCIES? Attacks on refugee
housing were less prominent in 2017 than in the two preceding years, which
each saw around 1,000 such attacks. However, 93 attacks occurred in the first
quarter of 2017. Amnesty International,
Amnesty International Report 2014/15 - Germany Amnesty
International AI, 25 February 2015 www.refworld.org/docid/54f07dec15.html [accessed 19 May
2019] TORTURE AND OTHER
ILL-TREATMENT The authorities
continued to fail to address obstacles preventing effective investigation of
allegations of ill-treatment by police. No federal state established an
independent police complaints body to investigate allegations of serious
human rights violations by police. Except for the federal states of Berlin
and Brandenburg, police officers remained under no legal obligation to wear
identity badges. Police officers in Brandenburg were due to start wearing
identification badges in January 2013. The National Agency
for the Prevention of Torture, Germany’s national preventive mechanism under
the Optional Protocol to the UN Convention against Torture, remained severely
under-resourced and unable to fulfil its functions, including regular visits
to detention sites. Its chairperson and another member resigned in August
over the lack of resources. Investigations
continued into excessive use of force by police during a demonstration in
Stuttgart in September 2010. In October, the Stuttgart local court found one
police officer guilty of physical assault, for hitting a protester with a
baton, and issued him with an eight-month suspended prison sentence. On 10 October, the
Frankfurt Higher Regional Court confirmed the Frankfurt Regional Court
judgement of 4 August 2011, which had awarded moral damages worth €3,000 to
Markus Gäfgen. He was threatened by two police
officers with intolerable pain in 2002 as he was apprehended on suspicion of
kidnapping an 11-year-old boy. The first instance court had qualified the
threat as “inhuman treatment” under the European Convention on Human Rights. On 13 December,
Magdeburg regional court convicted a police officer of negligent homicide for
the death of asylum-seeker Oury Jalloh,
who burned to death in a cell in Dessau police station in 2005. Despite
lengthy legal proceedings, the circumstances of Oury
Jalloh’s death and the degree of police involvement
in it were still not clarified. INTERNATIONAL
JUSTICE Germany did not
codify enforced disappearance as a criminal offence, as required by the
International Convention against enforced disappearance. Conclusions and
recommendations of the Committee against Torture U.N. Convention
against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or
Punishment -- Doc. CAT/C/DEU/CO/5
(2011) www1.umn.edu/humanrts/cat/observations/germany2011.html [accessed 27
February 2013] C. Principal subjects
of concern and recommendations Definition and criminalization of torture 9. The Committee
welcomes the State party’s Code of Crimes against International Law which
codifies, inter alia, crimes of torture in the context of genocide, war
crimes or crimes against humanity, in accordance with article 7 of the Rome
Statute of the International Criminal Court. However, the Committee expresses
serious concern at the absence of provisions adequately criminalizing acts of
torture in the context of general criminal law, as the application of
provisions of the Criminal Code (including sect. 340, para. 1, in conjunction
with sect. 224) and the Military Penal Code (sects. 30 and 31) do not
adequately punish the infliction of pain or suffering, whether physical or
mental, as required by article 1 of the Convention. Moreover, while noting
the data on investigations into alleged offences by law enforcement officers,
the Committee regrets the absence of clarity regarding which of the
allegations of ill-treatment by public officials, if proven true, would
amount to torture under article 1 of the Convention or cruel, inhuman or
degrading treatment or punishment under article 16 of the Convention (arts. 1
and 4). The State party
should include torture as a specific offence in its general criminal law and
ensure that its definition encompasses all the elements of article 1 of the
Convention. In accordance with the Committee’s general comment No. 2 (2007)
on implementation of article 2 by States parties, the State party should also
clarify which of the incidents of ill-treatment by law enforcement officers
reported in the State party’s response to the list of issues amount to
torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, in
order to help the State party identify how and where the Convention is
implemented and the monitoring thereof by the Committee. 10. The Committee
notes with concern that the State party has no specific information on cases
in which the Convention has been invoked and directly applied before the
domestic courts (arts. 2 and 10). The Committee
recommends that the State party take steps to disseminate the Convention to
all public authorities, including the judiciary, thus facilitating direct
application of the Convention before domestic courts, both at the federal and
Lander level, and that it provide an update on illustrative cases in its next
periodic report. “No Questions
Asked” - Intelligence Cooperation with Countries that Torture Human Rights Watch,
June 29, 2010 -- ISBN: 1-56432-650-0 www.hrw.org/reports/2010/06/28/no-questions-asked-0 Download the full
report at www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/reports/ct0610webwcover.pdf [accessed 28 January
2013] The 62-page report
analyzes the ongoing cooperation by the governments of France, Germany, and
the United Kingdom with foreign intelligence services in countries that
routinely use torture. The three governments use the resulting foreign
torture information for intelligence and policing purposes. Search … AMNESTY
INTERNATIONAL For current
articles:: Search Amnesty
International Website https://www.amnesty.org/en/search/?q=germany+torture&ref=&year=&lang=en&adv=1&sort=relevance [accessed 1 January 1, 2019] Scroll
Down ***
EARLIER EDITIONS OF SOME OF THE ABOVE *** Human Rights
Reports » 2005 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices U.S. Dept of State Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and
Labor, March 8, 2006 www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2005/61650.htm [accessed 28 January
2013] 2009-2017.state.gov/j/drl/rls/hrrpt/2005/61650.htm [accessed 4 July
2019] TORTURE
AND OTHER CRUEL, INHUMAN, OR DEGRADING TREATMENT OR PUNISHMENT – The law
prohibits such practices, and these prohibitions were generally followed. The
government investigated a number of abuses committed in previous years and
prosecuted police who mistreated persons in custody. Freedom House
Country Report - Political Rights: 1 Civil Liberties: 1 Status: Free 2009 Edition www.freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2009/germany [accessed 28 January
2013] LONG URL
ç 2009 Country Reports begin on Page 21 [accessed 12 May
2020] The judiciary is independent,
and the rule of law prevails. The Federal Constitutional Court vets the
compatibility of legislation with the basic law. In addition to having its
own provisions, Germany is a party to the European Convention on Human
Rights. Prison conditions are adequate, though the Council of Europe has
criticized the practice of preliminary detention before formal arrest; people
so detained may not contact a lawyer or family members. All
material used herein reproduced under the fair use exception of 17 USC § 107
for noncommercial, nonprofit, and educational use. PLEASE RESPECT COPYRIGHTS OF COMPONENT
ARTICLES. Cite this
webpage as: Patt, Prof. Martin, "Torture by Police, Forced Disappearance
& Other Ill Treatment in the early years of the 21st Century- Germany",
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