The parents of Irishman Oisín Osborn, shot dead by Hamburg police in May 2019, have succeeded in having their case against Germany examined by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).

The Osborns believe their son’s murder, 10 days after he became a father, was the result of excessive police force. The case, which never went to trial, has now been re-examined in a German television documentary broadcast on Tuesday evening – and in an upcoming RTÉ Radio 1 documentary on Saturday.

It comes as new data shows German police have shot and killed 17 people so far this year, the highest figure since 1999, with a high incidence involving people with mental health problems.

Oisín Osborn’s parents and his widow, Nikol, agree that he had such problems on May 22, 2019.

( Why did German police shoot Oisín Osborn?Opens in a new window )

Nikol Osborn woke up to find her 34-year-old husband, an engineer by training, pacing and arranging knives in the room. She made an emergency call to seek medical assistance for her 34-year-old husband, but her mention of knives resulted in the call being referred to police.

A few minutes later, a special forces unit burst into the family house and the police officers, mistaking a lighter for a cartridge, rushed upstairs, waiting for an armed man.

On the landing, they were confronted by Oisín Osborn, carrying a pot on his head. In his belt was a spatula that the police mistook for a knife. The officers, wearing protective gear and brandishing large protective shields, said they used pepper spray to no avail. Then, as Osborn approached them, two officers fired a total of six shots. The shots passed through Osborn’s throat, trunk, thigh, arm and chest.

“The police had no Tasers, no body cameras, no training and were exonerated on grounds of self-defense after putting six bullets into our son’s body,” said Katrina Osborn, who was born in Abbeyleix but grew up in Castletroy, County Limerick.

( Oisín Osborn ‘wasn’t himself that day’, but why did German police shoot him?Opens in a new window )

The officers who shot Osborn refused to testify during the ensuing investigation. For Katrina Osborn, the decision to dismiss the case without trial “looks like a systematic cover-up: not only on the part of the police, but also on the part of the prosecutor and the courts.”

After exhausting all legal avenues in Germany and being unable to pursue private prosecutions, Osborn’s application to the ECHR in Luxembourg has passed the initial review stage but could take years to move forward.

The NDR documentary broadcast on Tuesday evening shows that Germany’s 16 states do not have an independent police ombudsman for such cases of fatal police shootings. Instead, the investigation is carried out by the suspect’s colleagues as well as prosecutors, who are in close daily contact with the police. Only three Länder have compulsory police training to recognize and take care of people likely to find themselves in extreme psychological situations.

Oisín Osborn’s father, David, hopes that renewed media interest – amid growing reports of killings by police officers – will increase interest in their case before the ECHR and contribute to change in Germany.

“It’s not just us,” he said. “In these cases, in more than 90% of cases, the police are exonerated, the prosecutors close the case, blame the victim and sweep everything under the rug. »

The violence and murders committed by the German police are the subject of a new investigative book, entitled All Just One-Off Cases.

Its author, Mohamed Amjahid, said the Osborn case is part of a trend in Germany, where about 75 percent of people killed by police have a history of mental health problems or had a psychotic episode during the confrontation. .

“The scandal is not only that this continues to happen, but also that the police continue to cover things up,” he said. “And there seems to be a societal consensus that this is an effective solution: send in the police and leave the problem alone.”