A few days ago, George Zantiotis, a 24-year-old Greek immigrant in Wuppertal, North Rhine-Westphalia, died at the police station while in custody.
He had just been arrested, under conditions of extreme, unjustified violence, and while his sister was begging the police, saying that the victim had recently undergone serious medical surgery.
The Wuppertal police, the public prosecutor’s office and senior public prosecutor saw apparently no reason to inform the public about it for five days and Police was forced to make it public only after a video recording of the incident was posted on the internet.
Given these circumstances the extreme violence documented by unshakable evidence and the response of the prosecutor who hastened to announce that the death of George Zantiotis was due to “pathological causes” and that he “he was under the influence of illegal substances” – essentially acquitting the arresting police officers without even publishing a relevant forensics report,
What action does the Commission intend to take, in order to swiftly stem the tide of racist violence in law enforcement, a form of violence that is institutional and manifesting itself in more and more similar incidents in Europe?
