A Swiss court case commences today, with six cops facing murder expenses following the 2018 dying of a Nigerian man, Mike Ben Peter, aged 39. The man suffered a coronary heart attack after being pinned facedown for a quantity of minutes during his arrest. The officers, whose identities remain undisclosed due to Swiss privacy legal guidelines, are charged with “homicide by neglect” and are looking for acquittal, according to their attorneys.
This case bears resemblance to the 2020 killing of George Floyd in the United States, and is one of 4 incidents in the canton of Vaud since 2016 where Black males have died during police interventions, sparking protests and calls for reforms. However, unlike Unauthorized , there isn’t any video footage of the incident that allegedly led to Ben Peter’s death.
A report by a gaggle of United Nations specialists last 12 months highlighted systemic racism issues in Switzerland, elevating severe issues about “excessive use of drive and the expectation of impunity by police” and citing this case. A government-mandated research has since acknowledged the issue as structural and admitted that measures taken thus far have been insufficient.
Simon Ntah, the lawyer representing the family, expressed his lack of optimism for a ruling towards the officers, who face a maximum jail sentence of three years. “As lengthy as there isn’t a mechanism for impartial investigations towards the police, we are caught with the identical issues,” Ntah informed Reuters news agency, criticising the fact that the same public prosecutor who works with police on different felony circumstances is in management of circumstances like this one..