What’s wrong with the prosecuting authorities in Bremen? Last New Year’s Eve 15-year old Syrian boy Odai K. was beaten up and kicked by several thugs. His injuries were so serious that he died some days later in hospital. Now people in Bremen are asking themselves whether the deadly crime could have been prevented.
During a parliamentary query, MP Jan Timke of the “Bürger in Wut” party found out that two of three suspects, which had been arrested by the police a few days later, probably also took part in an axe attack in August 2014. At that time the 31-year old victim only just survived. The offenders then and now are members of a Bremen-based clan of Kurdish Yazidis.
In 2014 the Bremen police ransacked the houses of the suspects and confiscated weapons and drugs, but the weapons were not the same as used in the commission of the crime. Moreover, several witnesses delivered contradictory testimonies, says attorney Frank Passade. So the investigation concerning the 2014 attack is no longer ongoing, he states.
There has been no trial and no judgment till this day.
Two and a half years later there is not yet any result of the forensic examination of the weapons. But some days ago a reporter of the Bremen newspaper “Weser Kurier” talked to the victim of 2014, who insists that he had recognized two of the offenders on photographs and had revealed this to the police some days after the attack.
“I feel so sorry for the slain boy”, he told the paper. In his opinion the fifteen-year old could still be alive, if the assailants had been convicted and sent to jail. MP Jan Timke agrees. He has a lot of awkward queries for the municipal government which he is about air publicly at the next meeting in March. Among other, he wants to know whether the attacks had a religious or political background.
