ABSTRACT
The trial had been referred to as a ‘Scheinprozess’,1 a farce2 and ‘Haribos for the press’.3 It would become clear that many of the activists involved in pushing the Oury Jalloh litigation forward were not doing so because they believed in the ability of the trial to transform the conditions that resulted in Jalloh’s death. Indeed, few had faith that the court would even see the same set of facts that the activists saw. It was clear to many that the court was not going to attempt to uncover the layers of involvement, investment and complicity in the structures that obscured the details of Jalloh’s death, as the police had seemed to have closed ranks in collectively forgetting what had happened, and the prosecutorial and court system seemed not to be able to do anything about it. The prosecution had not even engaged the possibility that the death could have been a direct result of third-party actors, relying on a suicide thesis that could not be substantiated. Instead, the case would become a dialogic interaction among activists, lawyers, judges, prosecutorial services and the media, all vying for the unique ability to narrate a version of the events in their own terms and, thereby, to educate and influence those in a position to listen. In this way, the discussions that occurred outside of the courtroom were virtually as important to the activists working on this case as the discussions and episodes that occurred inside of the courtroom. The main point of the litigation was not to fight for a guilty verdict, but to have an effect on the way that this and similar issues were handled in the broader context of institutional racism and police brutality in Germany. With this in mind, it is important to recog-
nise that the critique of the police, judiciary and, to a certain extent, mainstream media as institutions was a primary mode of voicing dissent to institutional racism and police brutality, rather than focusing on the legal claims to justice as framed by the state prosecutor.
