George Zantiotis, a Greek immigrant, 24 years old, died in a police station in Wuppertal under unclear circumstances, on Tuesday, while he was in custody. But it took 5 days and a video had to travel from Germany to Greece and from there back to Germany for the authorities to make the event known, 6 days later, but blaming the dead man, after his death.
The audiovisual material and a short text appeared on the Greek Indymedia. In the dramatic video, one can only assume that several police officers are trying to immobilize a man lying on the ground. The person filming protests the arrest and starts crying, even shouting that the man on the ground is still a child and that he has had an operation.
As Christos Avramidis writes in ellinofreneianet.gr, based on information from Neues Deutchland, police officers are asking those watching to keep their distance, turn off their phone cameras and give their ID. In the short text on Indymedia, accusations are made against the police that there was no forensic report and that relatives were not allowed to see the body. The German public only saw the video on Saturday evening, several days after the death, as it was posted on Twitter.
According to the official version, the prosecutor's office, in response to a question from Neues Deutchland, said that a taxi driver had called the police in the early hours of the morning because people in his taxi were going back and forth across the street in a bad state. According to the prosecution, when police arrived, they found a “particularly aggressive” man and his sister. The man was subdued and taken into police custody. There, after the handcuffs were removed, he became aggressive again, according to authorities. A police doctor then took a blood sample. Immediately afterwards, the man was subjected circulatory collapse. Resuscitation efforts by the police doctor and the ambulance service were unsuccessful and the man died. Subsequently, the prosecution launched an investigation into the death.
The Wuppertal prosecutor's office told ND on Sunday morning that an autopsy had been carried out in the meantime. According to the prosecution's version, there were no indications that the police behaviour was linked to the young man's death and a toxicology report was still awaited, as there were indications that the man had consumed drugs during the night.
When asked why the death in police custody was not made public, the prosecution replied that it was a death caused by pathological causes and for this reason, the matter was not considered «media related».
The hashtag #GiorgouZantioti has been created on social media, where many users of different nationalities are already expressing their anger at the death of another man with a migrant background and blaming the police.
As the journalist Sebastian Weiermann explains in “ND”, the Death in Custody campaign has counted 199 deaths of people of colour and people affected by racism since 1990 in Germany.
«A big part of the police problem is that misconduct and potential crimes are covered up, relatives and the public are not informed.», the campaign said in a statement. We contacted Sebastian Weiermann, a German journalist, who was the first to report on the issue in Germany, and he comments that these similarities with the other cases are a suspicious aspect of the case. «The statements about drug use criminalised the deceased after his death and this is a common pattern.»
Finally, immediate developments are expected in the case as the police said that they will take an official position after the results of the toxicology tests, which is expected to be done today, Monday.
