A video shakes Belgium. The second highest police officer in the country is suspended because of the recordings, the parliamentary committees for home affairs and justice will meet next week to discuss the shocking images that come from a detention cell at Charleroi airport.
The film shows five officers who bring down a man. A blanket is wrapped around his head. A policeman sits on him for 16 minutes, pushing him down with all his might. At these moments, the inmate’s heartbeat skips – and a policewoman turns away, stretches her right arm up in the Hitler salute, seems to be having a great time. With two fingers of her left hand she indicates a mustache on her upper lip.
The man, an entrepreneur from Slovakia, needs to be reanimated. He dies a little later in the hospital.
Now the case has become a national police scandal. And that’s also because the video only became known this week – and the first consequences followed. Two and a half years after a surveillance camera recorded the footage in February 2018 and the man’s widow filed a civil lawsuit, the Nazi salute policewoman was transferred to the office this week. Although the Charleroi public prosecutor had known the pictures for a long time, nothing had happened until then.
The widow says she has the impression that the case is being delayed and that information is being suppressed. A spokesman for the public prosecutor’s office tries to explain: The conclusion of the investigation was delayed due to Corona.
The federal police assured that they had no idea about the recordings until Wednesday.
“Now they are falling out of the air in Belgium,” said the widow of the Belgian newspaper “Het Laatste Nieuws”, which had kept the video under lock and key until then first published on Wednesday. Together with her lawyer, the dead man’s wife is trying to change the examining magistrate.
She finally wants to know why her husband had to die, how everything was exactly. Shortly before his arrest on February 24, 2018, she had spoken to him on the phone.
“I’m happy for you. I love you. See you later, ”said Henrieta Chovancová (40), his last words to her. Then Jozef Chovanec (38) wanted to get on a plane, back to Slovakia, where he owned a company that placed Slovak workers on Belgian construction sites.
Foto: / AP Photo / dpa-“data-zoom-src =” https://bilder.bild.de/fotos/chovanec-haben-mit-auf-dem-ruecken-gefesselten-haenden-auf-der-liege-muss-reanimiert-haben-201507915- 72507296 / Bild / 7.bild.jpg “/>
Chovanec is lying on the bed with his hands tied behind his back and has to be reanimatedFoto: / AP Photo / dpa
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Everything sounded normal to his wife. But shortly afterwards the situation got out of hand – completely.
It is said that Chovanec did not show his ticket at boarding, pushed a stewardess aside. Why is not clear. He had a license.
In any case, the crew feared further problems and expelled the nervous-looking Chovanec from the machine. When the airport police came, he resisted. The officers should have carried him away.
A doctor later examined him, according to reports only through the cell’s peephole. The doctor noticed dilated pupils and assumed that Chovanec was under the influence of alcohol or drugs. The autopsy showed that this was not the case.
During the night Chovanec suddenly freaked out. Again and again he hit his head against the cell wall until his whole face was red with blood. This is shown by the surveillance recordings.
The following are the scenes that led to the death of the man – and which remind the widow of the killing of George Floyd: “Only that the police laughed at my husband and the Nazi salute was shown.”
Instead of wrapping his head in a blanket and exerting heavy violence on him for minutes, you should have helped her husband, she says.
Many politicians see it the same way, there is horror across the parties. The social democratic mayor of Charleroi, Paul Magnette (49), spoke of “unacceptable behavior”. The Christian Democratic Justice Minister Koen Geens (62) was “completely shocked”. Belgium’s Interior Minister Pieter De Crem (58) said: “There is no proportionality.”
André Desenfants, head of the airport police and at the same time the second highest police officer in Belgium, announced that his office would be suspended for the duration of the investigation. He was deeply affected by the pictures.
Now, among other things, it should be clarified why the investigation of the case has been taking so long, why the Hitler salute policewoman was not held accountable for two and a half years and whether there were really attempts to cover up.
In the meantime, the police officer also spoke up through her lawyer. She was very young at the time, only 22 years old. It was a tense mood and she just wanted to make a joke with the Nazi greeting.
She’s sorry now. And by the way: “The man didn’t die from this gesture.”
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