Swiss police: Serial killer of Black people?
Thursday, 09. September 2021

Permit to kill by "self-defense" = Impunity guaranteed!
NEW POLICE HOMICIDE. IN MORGES, AFTER BEX, ETC.

PRESS RELEASE, SEPTEMBER 7, 2021
CRAN - Crossroads of Reflection and Action Against Anti-Black Racism
Observatory of Anti-Black Racism in Switzerland

Four. This is the number of Black people who have died, since 2016, in contact with the police, in the Swiss Canton of Vaud (VD), capital Lausanne, world headquarters of Olympism and its humanist values. Above all, all four deaths occurred during the mandate of the same political authority, the Green Minister of Justice and Police, Béatrice Mettraux (66 years old), boss since 2013 of this killer police. Is this the result of her African experience, in the land par excellence of the trivialization of structural crimes against Blacks and the denial of any justice to them, since the slave trade, slavery, colonization, Islamization, Christianization, etc.? According to the website of the Vaudois Greens, this lawyer lived and worked between 1980 and 1990 in Senegal, Rwanda and Mali ...

Ten. This is the number of Blacks snatched from their lives by the police throughout Switzerland. This is a count kept by the CRAN Observatory since 2001. Not counting the mutilated bodies. The last victim has just been executed on August 30, 2021 on a train platform, in Morges, in the canton of Vaud. The circumstances are reminiscent of the casual behavior of the police officer who killed George Floyd in the United States.

Derek Chauvin (George Floyd's assassin) must have accompanied in spirit the police officers who left a young Black man who had threatened them with a "small knife", or even a "rock", according to witnesses1, to die at their feet in total detachment. He lived in Zurich and was psychologically unstable, having been shot three times. Handcuffed afterwards and his pockets emptied, it took the intervention of a nurse who happened to be present on the platform to give him a heart massage five minutes later. Too late. Another death that could have been avoided if the two policemen had proceeded to this massage immediately after having handcuffed him. Willingness to let this black body be totally destroyed?

In Zürich: police delirium - and unpunished - on a Black man sprayed with 13 bullets!

The process of granting a License to Kill Blacks in "self-defense" has intensified greatly in recent years, thanks to methodically developed ad hoc case law.

• June 24, 2020. Zürich. The court acquitted a police officer on charges of attempted murder after he shot an Ethiopian man eleven times for allegedly threatening him with a kitchen knife during a checkpoint in December 20152. The shooting distance was "at least half a meter for each hit.3 His colleague, who fired just two shots, was not charged. Three other officers present at the scene were not called to appear. The only account of this case comes from the police. The multi-mutilated victim is still unable to articulate a factual account. Living in Switzerland for over twenty years with his wife, Omar Mussa Ali became seriously ill in 2015. Doctors diagnosed him with paranoid schizophrenia, with attacks during which he no longer knows where he is, what he is doing or saying. He is 42 years old. He is disabled and no longer works. His condition is known to the Zurich police. But on December 27, after an alert from his wife, a patrol came across him wandering in the street at 6 a.m. with a kitchen knife in his hand. He would have threatened the police officers by shouting "kill me, kill me! ("kill me, kill me!"). This was enough to make him look like a "terrorist": after having miraculously survived the murderous delirium of the shooting policemen, he was immediately placed in detention after his release from hospital. At his trial in 2016, prosecuted for terrorizing the police, the judge will waive the sentence because of his highly visible schizophrenia. Instead, she ordered outpatient therapy. Today, afflicted with constant, daily pain from six bullet wounds to his head and chest, Omar Mussa Ali has not given up his quest for justice.

Masquerade rule, in Black vs. Police trials

La tâche est herculéenne pour lui, au regard de ses minuscules moyens. Surtout, il ne peut rien face aux solidesarrangements qui permettent de fabriquer les éléments d’une mascarade de justice:

• The task is Herculean for him, considering his tiny means. Above all, he can do nothing in the face of the solid arrangements that make it possible to manufacture the elements of a masquerade of justice:

• Although five police officers were involved in the events that occurred, only two of them will be invited to appear and testify in the case against Omar Mussa Ali.

• The prosecutor, who had already exonerated the police officers the day after their crimes, will be the same to investigate against Mr. Ali in 2016, before doing so against one of the officers at his trial.

• Indeed, in the face of the prosecutor's obstructions (stay of proceedings against the police officers, etc.), Omar Mussa Ali and his lawyer will appeal to the Federal Court in 2018. Only the police officer who fired 11 times, including three in the back of the victim, will be admitted to appear. In 2019. The investigation will be entrusted once again to the same biased prosecutor. Falsifying the reality thanks to the exclusivity of the police story, the court will follow him: the police officer will be totally cleared in 2020!

Masquerade? Obviously: no witnesses and no damning images = 0 chance in front of a police and a justice system united and ready to do anything to deny justice to black people.

• March 30, 2021 and August 19, 2021. In the first instance and on appeal, the courts charged with examining the "self-defence" denied by a Congolese family to the brigadier who killed their son (Hervé Mandundu, 27 years old) in 2016 in Bex (VD),4 considered the police officer's performance proportionate. Coming with four colleagues to control this young father "under the influence of drugs", according to the police, and threatening a neighbor with a kitchen knife, the police officer and his colleagues will equip themselves accordingly: bulletproof vests, knife-proof gloves, tactical batons, pepper spray, etc.. Although accompanied and equipped in this way, in addition to being experienced and trained in self-defense in principle, the killer policeman persisted: "I shot to save my life". Could the only police choice have been this one? The judges agreed: "Self-defense! They had also arranged to facilitate this beneficial outcome for the police officer:

- Refusal to listen as witnesses to neighbors who are rather critical of the police,

- Refusal to reconstruct the crime scene, etc.

Masquerade? The weight of overwhelming live images was missing here too. The injustice

August 30, 2021. Morges. Legally doped by these verdicts, the Vaudois police officers could not but settle down conveniently in the recidivism.Coming to the Morges station with a colleague to control a black man suffering from an apparent psychic disturbance and who started to pursue them with his "little knife", the police officer did not hesitate. He fired three times, even when the man collapsed. According to a witness: "For me, the third shot was unjustified"5.

Certainly, here, damning and explicit images are fortunately available. But, the Waldensian factory of impunity, seems to be already preparing the same masquerade:

- Dissimulation dans les médias des origines Noires de cette victime, après les avoir mentionnées le premier jour, dans le journal télévisé de la RTS du 31 août 2021. Peur d’un soulèvement Black Lives Matter ou de fâcher les ambassadeurs africains qui (enfin!) interpellent de plus en plus les autorités face à la recrudescence des violences policières racistes, à la suite de George Floyd?

- Propagation of theories as unbearable as they are laughable, such as suicide by police, or "suicide by cop", a discovery of the American police6, undoubtedly inspired by the prejudice consisting in making the victim of a rape responsible for her rape: "She asked for it"!

- The police commander had already given the prosecutor the following orientation on television, despite the fact that the procedure was underway: "We are in a situation where self-defense is proven. (...) I consider that this is an element that the prosecutor will have in mind when he analyzes the behavior of this person "7. 7 He also explained the non-resuscitation of the victim by "the desire of the police officers to make sure that they were not in danger. It is true that for some minds, a Black man, even one with bullet holes in him, handcuffed and lying on the ground, unconscious, is still extremely dangerous! ...

Minister Béatrice Mettraux should resign!

In light of the above,

• CRAN sends its deepest condolences to the family of the young man killed in Morges and shares their pain at this loss. May the Ancestors give this son the best rest!

• CRAN strongly denounces the recurrent destruction of the lives of young Black people in Switzerland, thanks to the laissez-faire policy that serves as a compass for the responsible authorities. The only strong signal sent to a police force assured of its total impunity, despite its proven racist violence, after the tragedy in Bex for example, was to reward the killer brigadier with the rank of sergeant.

• Le CRAN invite la ministre Verte Béatrice Mettraux à démissionner de son poste (Justice et Police), sinon à changer de département. Déjà quatre morts à l’actif de sa gouvernance. Combien de corps Noirs lui faudra-t-il encore laisser détruire par ses troupes pour ébranler sa conscience humaniste?

• CRAN would like to draw the attention of the authorities as a whole to the increasing deterioration of the image of the Canton of Vaud and Lausanne as well as of Switzerland as a whole, with regard to the recurrent murders of Black people. The representation of a "Vaud/Switzerland Police, killer of Blacks" (with the support of the Justice) will worry many people of African descent having an international prestige and more and more sensitive to the structural expression of anti-Black racism as well as to the non-consideration of its new frontier: "BlackLives Matter"!

• The CRAN calls for a change of heart for another Derek Chauvin effect, by condemning for the first time in Switzerland a police officer who killed a Black man. The young Black man killed in Morges, half of Swiss origin, could make this leap possible. His death, all Black deaths, as well as the bodies mutilated by unpunished police violence, like the bullet-riddled body of Omar Mussa Ali, will not cease to excite the conscience of Black people in Switzerland and outside of Switzerland.

For the Management Board of CRAN, The Spokespersons:

• André LOEMBE, Vice-President (079 345 08 52)

• MUTOMBO Kanyana, Secretary General (079 754 54 85)

COMMUNIQUE SENT FOR INFORMATION TO:

• Federal Councillor (Minister) in charge of Justice and Police, Bern

• Cantonal Councillor (Minister) in charge of Justice and Police, Lausanne

• State Council (Government) of the Canton of Vaud, Lausanne

• President of the International Olympic Committee, Lausanne

• Attorney General of the Canton of Vaud, Lausanne

• Police Commander of the Canton of Vaud, Lausanne

• Permanent Delegate of the African Union to the United Nations Office in Geneva

• Ambassadors of African and non-African countries in Switzerland, Berne and Geneva

• Federal Commission against Racism (CFR), Bern

• Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Geneva

• UN Special Rapporteur on Racism, Geneva

• UN Commission on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), Geneva

• European Commission on Racism and Intolerance (ECRI), Strasbourg

• National and international press in Switzerland

• Media in African countries

• African NGOs and associations

• International NGOs active in the defense of dignity and human rights

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1. Sur le drame de Morges, voir notamment : Journal de Morges, 31.08.2021, 20 Minutes, 31.08.2021 et suivants

2. Nous nous référons surtout ici au reportage paru en allemand sur le site de Die Republik (25.06.2020), sous la signaturede Brigitte Hürlimann. https://www.republik.ch/2020/06/25/herr-ali-und-die-polizei,

3. In 24 Heures, 05.04.2019

4. A propos du drame de Bex, voir Le Matin, 31.03.2021 ; 24 Heures, 31.03.2021 ; 20 Minutes, 22.3.2021 ; Communiqués du CRAN du 14.11.2016 et du 23.04.2021

5. In 20 Minutes, 31.08.2021

6. La thèse a été avancéepar une responsable de Stop-Suicide appelée à contribution (20 Minutes, 1.09.2021)

7. Interview du commandant de Police (Vaud),en présence du procureur (RTS, émission Forum du 3.09.2021)