Slovakia ‘shocked’ at Belgian police brutality

Slovakia’s foreign minister on Friday expressed shock at footage showing Belgian police brutality that led to the death of a Slovak citizen in 2018.

Ivan Korcok also called on Belgian authorities “to investigate the whole matter without delay, responsibly and vigorously”.

“Like the entire Slovak public, I am shocked by the footage published by the Belgian media,” Korcok wrote on his Facebook page.

On Thursday, a video emerged showing a Slovak man, Jozef Chovanec, being violently pinned down by airport police officers, in images that recalled the fate of George Floyd in the US.

The CCTV images, seen by AFP, date to February 2018, when Chovanec was taken off a plane in Charleroi, Belgium, after refusing to show his ticket as he boarded.

Several police officers are later seen entering the room to handcuff Chovanec. When this fails to calm him, they return to hold him down, with one sitting on his chest for 16 minutes.

During this sequence, a female officer is seen in the cell dancing and making a Nazi salute.

Chovanec was then taken to hospital where he died after going into a coma, officially of a heart attack.

juh/dt/bsp