Committee Says German Border Police Too Brutal

Just as Germany has begun to debate whether torturing of suspects by the police is justified in certain circumstances,

the Council of Europe has published a controversial report that is likely to add fuel to the already raging fire over the issue.

The report that was released last Wednesday after a go-ahead from the German government says that officers of the country's Federal Border Protection Police (BGS) force are often excessively brutal while clamping down on illegal foreigners and asylum-seekers.

The Council’s Committee on the Prevention of Torture illustrated its findings with reported cases of violence on the part of German officers. It tells, in one of the worst instances, of a Nigerian woman who was shackled to a wooden bench before being deported from Berlin.

The border guards are reported to have carried the woman on the bench onto the aircraft. Once on board, a BGS officer is said to have pressed a finger against the woman’s nose and the back of her head to break her resistance, a “common practice” according to the BGS. The report says the officers were forced to take the woman off the plane again, when the captain refused to take-off with the woman on board under such circumstances. Following that, the report describes the officers as beating the woman with a truncheon while she was still handcuffed to get her into a waiting van.

Unnecessarily violent

The report draws on a 12-day trip by a visiting delegation of 13 doctors and legal, human rights and prison experts, who inspected German police stations, prisons, airport detention facilities and closed psychiatric clinics in Dec. 2000.

The delegation determined that both the police and the BGS officers were unnecessarily violent when they deported foreigners or made arrests.

Prison inmates informed the delegation that they had been beaten, kicked and even shot at when arrested -- this in spite of them putting up no resistance.

The experts found that cells in many police stations were sparsely furnished. Some didn’t even provide mattresses or beds. In a prison in Eisenhüttenstadt, the delegation discovered a cell equipped with four iron rings attached to the floor for tying prisoners down.

In a psychiatric clinic in southern German Wiesloch, patients were sometimes held in isolation in rubber rooms for months. The delegation also reported about an inmate in a prison for young offenders who was bound and left alone for 36 hours after he had tried to kill himself.

The group didn't discover any signs of maltreatment in retirement homes though.

The German government responded to the 83-page report with their own 66-page document. It acknowledged the criticism and the recommendations and said it would work to remedy the problems.

Torture debate attacked

Meanwhile, the debate on torture, which began in late Feb., was attacked by Interior Minister Otto Schily in an interview with the weekly Die Zeit published on Wednesday.

“This debate was wantonly started to break down boundaries,” the Social Democrat told the weekly Die Zeit. “When one softens the ban on torture, when one allows the consideration, there’s no stopping anymore....The result will be the death penalty.”

Schily showed sympathy for Frankfurt police force vice president Wolfgang Daschner, who has been accused of threatening to torture a suspect in the disappearance of the 11-year-old son of a prominent Frankfurt banker in the hopes of finding the boy.

“He acted out of concern for the child,” Schily said. “That is honorable. At the same time, we cannot create any incursions and leave it to officers whether the ban on torture will be observed or not.”

The governing coalition of Social Democrats and Greens concurs on the point. As if referring to the Council of Europe’s report Foreign Ministry State Secretary Kerstin Müller (Green), told a session of the Bundestag on Thursday, “We should not be under the illusion that only other states have homework to do.”