A video from 2018 that has just been published shows how a Belgian police officer sits for 16 minutes on the chest of a Slovak who died shortly after the deployment.
A case of police violence shakes Belgium and brings back memories of the George Floyd case. A video recorded by a surveillance camera in February 2018, which has only now been published, shows the Slovak Jozef Chovanec in a detention cell. The 38-year-old was previously taken from a plane at Charleroi airport because he refused to show his ticket when boarding. The video also shows Chovanec hitting his head against the wall until his face is bleeding profusely.
Several police officers later enter the cell to handcuff Chovanec. When he still does not calm down, the officers returned and held him. One of the officers sat on the man’s chest for 16 minutes. You can also see a policewoman dancing in the cell and showing the Hitler salute. Chovanec then came to the hospital, where, according to official reports, he died of a heart attack the next day.
Among other things, the Belgian newspaper “Het Laatse Nieuws” veröffentlichte das Video.
Authorities are taking the first steps
The authorities took the first steps after the video became known: André Desenfants, number two in the police hierarchy, resigned on Thursday for the duration of the investigation. The head of the administrative police’s general directorate, which is primarily responsible for transport, said at a press conference that the recordings hit him “deeply” and “shocked” him. He will let his office rest while an internal investigation is ongoing. He did not know the video before.
The Belgian Ministry of the Interior announced that disciplinary action would be taken against the officials concerned. The officer who showed the Hitler salute had been transferred as a punishment. “We will also have to find out why these recordings were never passed on to the highest authorities,” said spokesman Erik Eenaerts.
The incident commemorates the death of the African American George Floyd in the US city of Minneapolis in late May. He died after a police officer pressed his knee back on his neck for almost nine minutes. The case sparked anti-racism protests around the world.
The case of Chovanec only became public because his wife Henrieta Chovancova published the video against the advice of her lawyers, they said. Chovancova did not let himself be deterred because she was frustrated by the investigation, which has now been going on for two years. “Our client wanted to show these pictures to the world because she has no confidence in the criminal investigation,” said one of her lawyers.
She was sad, said Chovancova of the Belgian newspaper “De Morgen”. Authorities tried to sweep her husband’s death “under the rug as if it were trash that had to go,” she said. The Belgian newspaper “Het Laatse Nieuws” first reported on the video.
(APA / Red.)
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