In the last few days, a video of 2018 which shows a Belgian policewoman giving the Nazi salute as some of her colleagues laugh and dance around a man who had hit his head several times on the wall while in their custody, at Charleroi airport, about 40 kilometers south of Brussels. The man, a 38-year-old Slovak, was arrested by the airport police for causing problems on his flight arriving in Brussels; taken to a cell, handcuffed, he started beating his head against a wall until he bled, after which he ended up in a coma and died the next day in hospital. The video left many people horrified and Both an internal investigation by the federal police and a judicial investigation were launched.
The video, taken from the images shot by the security cameras, shows the Slovak man, Jozef Chovanec, beating his head until it bleeds in the cell where he was placed in custody. In addition to the policewoman who makes the Nazi salute, the images show the behavior of the other agents, who rushed to try to stop Chovanec: in some moments they laugh or dance, and then we see a policeman who remains sitting on Chovanec’s chest for 16 minutes, one something that reminded many of thekilling of George Floyd last May 25 in Minneapolis, in the United States.
In accordance to has reported BBC, Chovanec had a company that recruited construction workers in Slovakia to work on various projects in Belgium, and often accompanied them on trips. Chovanec’s family could not explain the reason for his behavior during the custody of the Belgian police, and the post-death autopsy showed no evidence of drugs or alcohol.
The video sparked outrage and horror in both Belgium and Slovakia, and Slovak Foreign Minister Ivan Korcok, he said to have reported the serious behavior of the airport police to the Belgian authorities.
Pieter De Crem, the Belgian interior minister, asked for a quick response from the federal police. Meantime The evening, the leading Belgian French-language newspaper, he wrote that the policewoman who had given the Nazi salute was suspended from duty as of August 20 and that André Desenfants, the airport police chief, He retired.
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