On February 22, the city court in the eastern Slovak town of Košice acquitted 10 police officers accused of forcing violence on six Roma children on camera inside a police station in March 2009. He announced. This is the third time the court has acquitted the defendants. This comes after Slovakia's Constitutional Court last year ordered a retrial of the 15-year-old case.
Various video recordings of the incident show police officers shouting racial slurs at Roma children (boys between 11 and 17 years old) and ordering them to stand naked and with their hands behind their heads. The situation was visible. He was also seen releasing an unmuzzled dog at the children and threatening them, and the dog is said to have ended up biting three of them. In one video clip, a police officer puts a gun to one of the boys' heads and forces him to kiss his shoes.
The officers recorded videos on their cellphones and sent them to friends and colleagues, and the evidence was eventually leaked to the press, leading to criminal charges (along with legal representatives from the Civil and Human Rights Center).
Despite being presented with disturbing video footage and hearing testimony from the victims, the Košice City Court twice dismissed the case due to “conclusive evidence”.
In the first ruling in the case, handed down in 2015, Municipal Court Judge Daniela Brazowska said the evidence was “insufficient to prove guilt or arguable that the acts presented by prosecutors took place.” “It is insufficient to reach any conclusion.” She argued that the video evidence could not visually or audibly identify the perpetrator, meaning the only evidence the court could rely on was the testimony of the six victims.
Their testimony was often contradictory, given the age of the victims at the time of the incident, the fear they must have experienced throughout the ordeal, and the amount of time that had elapsed between the abuse and the court hearing. As the case dragged on, fewer people wanted to testify at subsequent court hearings, and those who did testify became even more confused as time passed.
After two acquittals on similar terms, the case went to the Constitutional Court. The May 2023 ruling noted that the constitutional rights of the victims were violated during the judicial process and ordered the case to be retried at the municipal court level.
Judge Brazowska, who heard the first two dismissals, was assigned to oversee the new trial. On February 22, she again acquitted all of the officers (nine men and one woman), citing insufficient evidence as she had before. Prosecutors have already appealed this latest ruling, and the case will be brought back to the county court in Košice in the near future.
Košice City Court's February ruling marks the second time in less than six months that a court has dismissed a case involving police brutality against Slovak Roma, despite video evidence.
In September 2023, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) announced a case against a Slovak police officer who was filmed attacking an elderly woman, a disabled person, and a child during a police raid on the Roma community in Zborov in 2017. was rejected.
The Zborov case, like the Košice case, was referred to the ECHR after the Slovak justice system stalled in prosecuting the officers despite overwhelming video evidence.
The ECHR's decision to dismiss this case is an important decision for human rights lawyers defending and seeking justice for Roma victims of police violence in countries with structurally anti-Roma national justice systems, such as the Slovak Republic. It was a big blow.
Indeed, the ECHR judgment has made it clear that video evidence is not necessarily considered conclusive in cases of police brutality against Roma in European courts.
However, video evidence proving insufficient to secure a conviction in cases involving racist violence against Roma is not a new phenomenon in Europe.
In the Czech Republic, video evidence of the police killing of Stanislav Thomas in 2021 (as well as evidence from the ombudsman that police lied about the sequence of events leading up to his death) led to the Czech judicial system It did nothing to convince him of his guilt. Officers in attendance. The case, dubbed the “Roma George Floyd case” because a police officer knelt on the back of Stanislav's neck before he died, was judged as much by public opinion as by the courts.
Before the autopsy results were released, Prime Minister Andrej Babiš issued a public statement supporting the police officers accused of causing Tomas' death and praised their actions. The Prime Minister even said that if he were an “ordinary person” he would never have been in Mr Thomas' position. The case is currently before the ECHR after the Czech Constitutional Court rejected an appeal to prosecute the police officers involved.
A similar incident in 2016, in which a Romani man died at the hands of an angry mob at a pizzeria in the Czech town of Žatec, was partially filmed by a witness. The Romani man is nearly beaten to death by four customers and later by police, who can be seen screaming in pain as they pin him to the ground, the video shows. It is known that he died shortly after the video was shot. As in Thomas' case, an autopsy concluded that the cause of death could not be attributed to the actions of a third party. Despite video evidence of the assault, no police officers or civilians involved in the incident have been charged with a crime.
In Bolintín Vale, Romania, in April 2020, witnesses filmed police beating and racially abusing a Romani man as he lay face down in the dirt with his hands tied behind his back. One victim's screams can be clearly heard as four police officers surround him. He punched him all over his body, and the other two punched him on the soles of his bare feet.
The victims, eight Romani men and a 13-year-old boy, were beaten for about 30 minutes and threatened with retaliation if they complained. Many of the assaults were caught on video. A police officer can be heard using racial slurs and threatening a person filming the incident. The criminal investigation is still ongoing almost four years later, and none of the officers have been charged.
Although all of these incidents of police brutality are caught on camera, justice is denied and a corrupt system that extends beyond law enforcement to a criminal legal system that is structurally racist against Roma people. It tells the story. Black Lives Matter has changed the way we talk about racist police violence in Europe, but the gains there appear to be quickly disappearing.
The democratization of evidence collected through filming of police discrimination already appears to be losing its influence in Europe, which has become desensitized to the suffering of racism. We live in an increasingly cruel world. A world where human rights abuses multiply day by day, and post-truth political rhetoric denies the facts right in front of us. In this context, unsettling images of the torture and murder of Roma caught on camera do little to stir social consciousness or shake up an institutionally racist justice system.
Europe faces an access to justice crisis that has been building for some time. If the entire justice system can ignore video evidence of brazen atrocities committed by racists sworn to protect and serve its people, the consequences will extend far beyond Roma. Police impunity, guaranteed by a structurally racist justice system, affects every underclass of people in Europe. People who can't afford the best legal representation.
The access to justice crisis affects everyone as this summer's European elections bring us closer to a tipping point for the rise of far-right politics in Europe. If the judiciary, a pillar of our democracy, is unable to carry out its function and bring justice to victims, even when provided with explicit video evidence of crimes, then the current direction of the judiciary cannot be reversed. When considered, it bodes alarmingly for the fate of democratic societies. political wind.
The corruption that has existed in Slovakia's criminal legal system for many years grows more despicable with each incident of police brutality. The children who appeared in the video at Košice Police Station, who were humiliated and abused for the entertainment of police officers, are now adults (the oldest are already in their 30s) and are still seeking justice. waiting.
Their legal farce began more than a decade ago in court, and it is unclear how long it will last. Human rights activists often say that justice delayed is justice denied, but that assumes that truth will ultimately prevail. For Roma, justice is becoming increasingly blind.
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial stance of Al Jazeera.
