Source: REUTERS/Kai Pfaffenbach
[Saba Sports News] On Tuesday local time, the German Football Association’s Sports Court fined Bayern Munich 20,000 euros for fans hanging inappropriate banners during a match in April. The banner displayed by Bayern Munich fans during their home game against Mainz on April 26 criticized the police’s handling of the Oltenburg incident. About a month earlier, a 21-year-old black man was shot by a police officer in Oltenburg. The banner held up by the Bayern fans read: “Racist killer police investigating racist killer police? Give Lorentz justice!” This was interpreted as referring to the police in Dornberg, who took over the investigation into the case. In 2021, Qosay Khalaf also died while in custody of the same police department. The German Football Association’s Sports Court deemed the banner as “behavior inconsistent with sportsmanship,” and found its content “beyond what is acceptable and permissible,” as the message constituted “disrespectful comments toward the police” and “generally and broadly described the police as racists, calling them ‘bastards’.”