Court rules on possible case of racial profiling in Zurich
Published: Tuesday, Feb 20th 2024, 04:50
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The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in Strasbourg is delivering its judgment today, Tuesday, on a identity check at Zurich main station. In 2015, Zurich city police officers demanded that a Swiss man of Kenyan origin identify himself. He refused and sued for discrimination.
The ECtHR recently announced the publication of the decision in a press release on Tuesday.
Mohamed Wa Baile, now 49, had already made the case public earlier. He was fed up with constantly being targeted by the police, no matter how he behaved, he said in the first-instance trial at Zurich District Court in 2016.
The controversial check took place on February 5, 2015 at 7 a.m. at Zurich main station. Zurich city police officers stopped Wa Baile and demanded identification. Wa Baile refused to show any ID or give his name. After the police found an AHV card with his name on it in his rucksack, they let him go.
A few weeks later, Wa Baile received a penalty notice for failing to comply with police orders. He was ordered to pay 100 francs. He took the penalty order to court and lost both before the District Court of Zurich and the High Court and finally before the Federal Supreme Court in 2018.
He avoided the policeman's gaze
The reason given by the police officer in charge for the check was that Wa Baile had avoided his gaze and had given the impression that he wanted to avoid the police patrol.
The Swiss courts agreed with this argument. Before the ECtHR in Strasbourg, the person concerned then claimed, among other things, a violation of the prohibition of discrimination enshrined in the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
The ECtHR classified the proceedings as an "impact case". These are cases to which the Court attaches particular importance for the further development of human rights protection and which raise new questions regarding the interpretation and application of the ECHR.
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