Date: Thu, 20 Feb 1997 21:44:22 +0100 (MET)
From: skolander@bahnhof.se (Bjoern Skolander)

Two Munich police men have a few weeks ago at a raid at a local Tea-room
maltreated a gay man so badly that his nose was broken at three places and
he had to spend several days in hospital.

Walter T., a 52 years old tourist from Berlin, went at 1 a.m. to a Tea-room
in Schwabing which was known as a cruising place for gay men. When he
arrived the light was out. As he in the semi-darkness touched another man
standing in the room he was immediately attacked and pressed against the
wall. He feared an attack and started to protect himself.

"I screamed and tried to get out, but I was unable to escape their hold.
Then I was beaten in my face with a hard object."

Scared to death he screamed for the police, without knowing that the two men
who was beating him, were in fact civil police men themselves.

"They dragged me into a car, and I was still fearing for my life."

First after a while he realized that the men were police men.

The two police men then took Walter T. to the police station in Schwabinger.
There his request for going to the toilet was rejected. "I was told that the
interrogation had to be finished first. First after having relieved myself
in my pants, and it was stinking, they let me go."

His request to make a telephone call was also rejected at first. As Walter
was mentioning that he himself was a public official, he received the
following response: "He is an official, that pig."

Walter T. than requested that his blood-stained injuries were photographed,
which was also rejected by the police men. "You may imagine how humiliated I
felt", he later told the press.

The Munich strategy to raid Tea-rooms is unique in Germany. Mr Joerg
Riechers, who is responsible for gay issues at the police forces in Berlin,
says it is inconceivable that police officers in Berlin should show up at
gay cruising places to take records, that later were used to charge a person
with causing public offence: "Such things we do not do anymore."

Also Mr Manfred Edinger at the Munich anti-violence project finds the
raiding of Tea-rooms in Bavaria unique and reactionary. "The attack on
Walter T. is the most serious bodily injury I have ever experienced", he said.

Translated from German by Bjoern Skolander <skolander@bahnhof.se>