The 38-year-old Chovanec died in hospital three days after a police operation in a cell at the Brussels airport. The police detained him on board a plane bound for Slovakia when, according to witnesses, he behaved aggressively towards the crew and the police. He did not have a valid ticket.
In 2020, a video from the police cell appeared, showing the inmate banging his head against the cell door and bleeding. The police then tried to pacify him. During the intervention, they threw a blanket over the inmate, knelt on him, laughed while doing so, and one of the policewomen raised her hand in a Nazi salute.
According to the opinion of Belgian doctors, the cause of Chovanac’s death was a strong impact to the head, which caused swelling of the brain. However, according to the doctors, the stoppage of the heart’s activity was caused by an injection from medical professionals who tried to calm him down. The Consul General of the Slovak Republic in Belgium, Andrej Michalec, confirmed to the TASR agency that according to Tuesday’s court decision, no one is criminally responsible for Chovanac’s death.
The Belgian law firm Cottyn, which represents Chovanc’s wife, will appeal against the verdict and is ready to take this dispute to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.
The inmate’s wife admitted that her husband suffered from affective disorders typical of schizophrenia and was receiving psychiatric treatment. He allegedly ran out of medicine in Belgium and needed to get to Slovakia quickly.
In the case, the head of the airport police was punished for not acting when he learned about the case.
