October 19, 1995
Web posted at: 7:50 p.m. EDT (2350 GMT)
From International Correspondent Bill Delaney
BERLIN (CNN) -- Many non-Germans have strong roots in Berlin, the country's most ethnically diverse city. Some say they're respected, but others, like Ali-Abdulli Iraki, tell a different story.
Iraki, a Palestinian married to a German, said his family was viciously attacked by officers of the law. "They jumped on us without asking anything and brutally hit me and pulled my brother away by the ears," he recalled, saying the police called them "Turks." (173K AIFF sound or 173K WAV sound)
According to Iraki and his brother, the officers thought they were trying to steal a car, a vehicle that turned out to be their own. Amnesty International says this story reflects a pattern of police mistreatment of non-Germans.
Amnesty's Michael Butler used as an example a Sri Lankan man accused, on his way to work, of stealing his own bicycle. "He was arrested with considerable force," Butler said. The man suffered a broken wrist.
The organization says that of 70 cases of police brutality it has received information about in the past three years, 90 percent involved non-Germans. It estimates that thousands of cases go unreported.
That's because, according to Amnesty, many non-Germans are grateful just to be in the country, and they don't want to risk their often precarious immigration status by complaining about the authorities.
Images of violent attacks a few years ago in Rostock, Germany, still haunt many non-Germans, (799K QuickTime movie) community leaders say. Racial assaults are down, and such attacks always appalled the great majority of Germans.
In Berlin, however, police authorities acknowledge that like most forces they have a few "black sheep." They say the Amnesty International report shocked them because it exaggerated the problem and was poorly researched.
"We try to educate our police officers to treat everyone the same and to not pre-judge situations," said Berlin police director Hartmut Moldenhauer. "Of course, as you know from your own country, racial considerations can enter in."
Ali-Abdulli Iraki said that years ago, in a police line-up, he and his wife identified five of the police who assaulted them. But Berlin police say that case is closed for lack of witnesses.
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