Belgian Court Upholds Suspension of Officer Who Gave Nazi Salute in Fatal Airport Incident

The policewoman had been suspended on October 15 for a period of 4 months, recalls Belga. She had made the Nazi salute during the forceful intervention of the airport police at Charleroi airport in February 2018. She had caused the death of the Slovak national Jozef Chovanec.

During her hearing at the time, she had tried to justify this gesture. "We see me making a Nazi salute. In fact, the gentleman was speaking in Slovak, roughly, loudly and very quickly. Ms. A (a colleague, editor’s note) who was at the exit of the cell looks at me and sees an expression on my face. She asks me what he is doing. I tell her that he is expressing himself like... and since I no longer fall on Hitler’s name, I make the sign to her," she had explained.

According to her, there was no negative connotation on her part, nor any particular intention. "With the stress and the adrenaline, I no longer fell on the name and it was the first thing that came to me," she had added, according to the Council of State’s ruling.

To obtain this grace, she had explained that this suspension measure could prevent her from applying for other positions. She had also expressed the fear of being stigmatized. Unfortunately, these explanations did not plead in her favor. In addition to the suspension, she risks a disciplinary sanction of dismissal.