AUSTRIA: Racist justice = No justice
01 March 2002
Marcus Omofuma was killed during his deportation en route from Austria to Nigeria, at the trial of the three police officers charged Marcus was declared to have "joint guilt" in his own death. In "The Trial of Marcus Omofuma" Chibo Onyeji writes of an analagous situation:
“The defense argued that the policemen who battered Rodney King were endangered by him and that Rodney King's conquered body, which was shown by the video as it was "being brutally beaten, repeatedly, and without visible resistance" was, in fact, the source of this endangerment”
On 1 May 1999, the asylum seeker Marcus Omofuma was killed during his forceful deportation from Austria to Nigeria via Sofia on a Balkan aeroplane after police bound and gagged him. In two international expert medical reports, the cause of death was determined to be suffocation as a consequence of gagging. On 4 March, the trial against three officers of Austria's Foreigner's Police began in the district court of Korneuburg on grounds of "torture of a prisoner resulting in death". The proceedings however, seem to have confused the victim with the perpetrators, as the gagging of the Nigerian man by three police officers was portrayed as self-defence, a position which was supported and finally partially accepted by the court. On 15 May, presiding judge Alexander Fiala sentenced the officers to eight months on probation. He justified the sentence, which is pending appeal, by declaring the "joint guilt" of Marcus in his own death.
The Rodney King syndrome
The use of racist stereotyping to justify the killing of black men is not new in the history of European and American judicial handling of killings of black people by white officials. In his book about the trial, ("The Trial of Marcus Omofuma"), Chibo Onyeji writes that:
One of the remarkable events in the celebrated Rodney King case in the United States of America in 1991 was the logic of the defence attorneys for the police. The defense argued that the policemen who battered Rodney King were endangered by him and that Rodney King's conquered body, which was shown by the video as it was "being brutally beaten, repeatedly, and without visible resistance" was, in fact, the source of this endangerment. The remarkable thing about this logic is not that it could be constructed at all but that it passed muster enough to lead to the acquittal of the police officers
A similar logic was applied in the Omofuma trial. The first days of the trial were characterised by denials of responsibility and the reversal of the roles of the victim and the perpetrator. Everytime mention was made of Marcus Omofuma, he was described as aggressive, screaming, resisting officials and making "animal noises". Josef B., one of the accused officers, admitted that when asked by a witness for the grounds of the deportation, he replied Omofuma was a criminal and drugs dealer, so as not to have to explain the details of the asylum process.
The events leading up to the death
The picture of a violent Omofuma and helpless officials acting in self-defence becomes even more bizarre when considering the facts of the case as presented in court by witnesses. The officers not only taped Omofuma's mouth, but his whole body. Officers started binding him in the car on the way to the aeroplane and carried him into the aircraft, where the binding process continued. The upper body as well as the head were bound on the seat with tape, according to witnesses, so tightly that his ribcage was severely restricted and breathing made almost impossible. A Dutch witness stated in court that one officer sitting behind Omofuma even pressed his foot against the back of Omofuma's seat in order to pull the tape as tightly as possible around his chest. Omofuma, it was stated, was sweating profusely. Another witness confirmed that when Omofuma started kicking the seat in front of him in panic, the person sitting in front of him, an employee of Balkan Air, got up and gave Omofuama blow to t