Illustrative stock photo (source: Sme )
Police officers were trying to agree on how to present the case of Blažej Svoboda, whom they beat last summer at the police station in Senec (Bratislava Region).
This stems from footage which the Denník N daily has at its disposal.
“Do you have a strategy?” Peter Horák, head of the investigators in Senec, asks his colleagues, as quoted by the Sme daily. He did so shortly after Svoboda submitted a criminal complaint and the case was investigated by the police inspectorate.
The police officer was charged
Horák is talking to three other police officers, including Tomáš L., who was later charged by the police inspectorate with abusing the powers of public official and torture. This indicates that their effort to come up with one version failed.
On the footage, the police officers that the father of the children who came to report the abduction of their mother could have testified about the beating. He was at the building at the time. Svoboda came to the police station after a call from the investigator and told police officers that the mother and children were alright.
They knew each other from a church group, which is considered by some Senec locals a sect, Sme wrote.
The footage is real
Tomáš L. wanted to push the version of the story that claims Svoboda worked with them and they had no reason to beat him. On the footage he also discusses the scheduled meeting with then-interior minister Robert Kaliňák (Smer), indicating that he could give them back up.
Sme also addressed Kaliňák with questions, but has not received the answers yet.
The veracity of the footage has been confirmed both by the Bratislava regional police and the police inspectorate, while the Interior Ministry says it is evidence in the case of a beaten witness.
The inspectorate is now checking its content and how it was made, Sme wrote.
