Refugee Abuse: Torture Scandal Rocks German Police

[unhappycamper]

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/hanover-police-officer-allegedly-tortured-two-refugees-a-1035098.html



A 39-year-old Hanover cop allegedly abused two migrants, forcing one of them to eat rotten pork, and threatened a colleague with a gun. As the investigation grows, it is revealing deeper problems among German police.

Refugee Abuse: Torture Scandal Rocks German Police
By SPIEGEL Staff
May 22, 2015 – 06:33 PM

In his spare time, Torsten S. engaged in typically rural activities in his village near Hanover: fishing, raising chickens, chopping wood, speeding through the mud in his jeep. But if the accusations against him turn out to be true, the police sergeant had another, uglier side that came out at work. For several days now, the 39-year-old has been the centerpiece of an affair that could shake Germans' confidence in their police force.

"I smashed him."
"He squealed like a pig."
"Then the bastard ate the rest of the rotten pork out of the refrigerator. Off of the floor."

These and other, similar sentences were allegedly sent by Torsten S. to colleagues via the Whatsapp messaging service, as he boasted about the way he treated two men, an Afghan and a Moroccan, in the police station. The Norddeutscher Rundfunk, a German public broadcaster, was the first to publish the messages, along with a photo of one of the two supposed victims lying on the ground, hands tied, his face obviously contorted in pain.

Amnesty International described what happened in the police station, which is located at Hanover's main train station, as torture. It sounds like something that would happen in Abu Ghraib -- not in the northern German state of Lower Saxony, not in an official German police department in 2015.