2023-08-14 13:39:09
An alleged victim of police violence was convicted on Monday at the Vienna Regional Court for Criminal Matters of defamation and false testimony. The 41-year-old man was sentenced to 15 months in prison, which he was conditionally granted. “You made up this story,” the judge stated in the verdict. Helmut Graupner, the man’s legal representative, was appalled by the decision: “This is the ultimate license for police torture.”
“Cases like this illustrate the urgent need for an independent investigative body that investigates suspected police violence transparently,” the human rights organization Amnesty International reacted to the non-final decision. “It is only through an independent investigation that victims of police violence have the opportunity to report police misconduct without fear of reprisals such as criminal prosecution,” it said in a statement sent to APA.
“I find that unfair. I will take action once morest the decision,” the 41-year-old appealed once morest his first-instance conviction in the courtroom. In any case, the Higher Regional Court (OLG) still has to deal with the case. After the trial, the 41-year-old said to the two media representatives present: “That’s how the courts are. Unfair.”
The man claims he was ill-treated by an officer at a police station on April 13, 2022. The injuries he suffered following leaving the office – including a bloodshot eye, bruises in the facial area and reddening of the conjunctiva – are documented in photos and in the form of hospital documents. The police officer had given him four to five blows to the left side of his face, including one just above the eye, the man explained in his ad. He also stated that he was choked until he might not breathe.
“I told the truth. I didn’t lie,” assured the previously blameless defendant in court. However, he no longer maintained his original account that he had received four blows in the neck in addition to the punch in the eye. Now in this respect there was only talk of a slap with the open hand. He limited the choking to a “grab on the neck” lasting no more than two seconds: “It was difficult to breathe.”
While the Vienna public prosecutor brought the 41-year-old to court, the abuse of office proceedings once morest the police officer were discontinued. The police officer denied the alleged punches. His account of what happened, according to which the man crashed into a table while making an evasive movement and injured himself, appeared to the public prosecutor’s office to be “quite credible”, as stated in the justification for the termination.
At the end of February 2023, the regional court did not follow a continuation application directed once morest it. According to the decision made available to the APA, the public prosecutor’s office gave “comprehensible reasons” for their hiring decision. The coroner’s “conclusive and comprehensible report” “clearly” shows that “other injuries might have been expected than actually occurred” in the course of events described by the 41-year-old. Conversely, that means that the 41-year-old’s version “cannot be reconciled with the objectified injuries”.
The medical examiner concluded that the injuries found in the facial area were more consistent with the information provided by the officer and not with the portrayal of the injured person. The delayed occurrence of reddening can definitely be explained by extensive contact following an impact on a tabletop.
At the start of the trial in July, the 24-year-old police officer stated as a witness under a duty of truth that the accused was at his police inspection station during an interrogation of the accused – the 41-year-old had left insulting comments on a woman on an Internet platform and was accused of continued harassment in the way of telecommunications (§107c StGB) are questioned – become increasingly aggressive. He was afraid that the enraged man would jump out of the chair and attack him, so he tried to hold him down with both hands and prevent him from getting up. Due to an evasive movement, the man’s head hit the table violently, with the table top being the subject of discussion. There were “obvious injuries,” the police officer admitted, and it was “a pretty violent impact,” which suddenly became the edge of the table.
Defense attorney Graupner is certain that this statement was adapted to the expert’s findings insofar as the coroner ruled out during the hearing that the facial injuries were caused by a tabletop. The conviction of his client is a “signal that police attacks will have no consequences,” Graupner feared.
The Viennese lawyer urged that in this case “all human rights standards” had been contradicted in several respects. The 41-year-old reported the alleged police assault half an hour later at another police station. As a result, his arrest was ordered – specifically by the suspected officer, to whose office the 41-year-old was then transferred. This undoubtedly violated the European Convention on Human Rights, Graupner noted: “The HRC provides procedural rights for victims.”
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