Slovakia: Investigation of 2013 police raid on Romani settlement exonerates the officers involved

News server SME.sk reported on 25 November that investigators in Slovakia have halted the prosecutions of police officers for abusing their powers, torturing people and trespassing during their raid on the Romani settlement of Moldava nad Bodvou in June 2013. The course of the investigation had been complained about previously not just by the Romani residents of the settlement and their attorney, but also by international organizations and Slovak Ombudsman Jana Dubovcová.

"From the beginning I had the impression the investigation would not be fair. The decision did not surprise me," Igor Hudák, a resident whose head was cracked by officers with a truncheon during the raid, told SME.sk.

Like a war

During the raid  20 police cars occupied the settlement and approximately 60 police officers in balaclavas jumped out of them and, according to local residents, burst into their homes, demolished their furnishings and assaulted them. "The officers went from house to house, breaking in doors, smashing windows, furniture attacking individual residents in a very aggressive way without communicating with them in any reasonable way whatsoever. People were injured, some of our clients had to seek medical treatment, we have the medical reports," news server iDNES.cz quoted Martina Vavrinčíka of the ETP nonprofit, which runs a community center in the settlement, as saying immediately after the raid.

The Slovak daily SME spoke with Hudák at the time, who alleged officers had "kicked me, beat me with truncheons and gave me electric shocks". According to witnesses a six-week-old infant was also injured during the raid, which some compared to a war.

Police:  What we did was in order, the "inadaptables" demolished their own homes

The official police report stated the officers were searching for wanted persons in the settlement and rejected the allegations that they had used brutality or disproportionate force. The media speculated that there had been a different reason for the raid and that it could have been revenge for local Romani people allegedly attacking a police patrol several days prior, throwing rocks at their vehicle.

Jana Mésarová, press spokesperson for police in Košice, said when describing the raid that the "inadaptable ciitzens" might have demolished their own homes and exploited the police action to attempt to get financial compensation. Police also claimed that a local resident attacked one of their intervening officers with an ax.

SELECTED PROBLEMATIC POLICE INTERVENTIONS AGAINST ROMANI PEOPLE IN SLOVAKIA

August 1999 – A 21-year-old Romani man dies after a police interrogation as a result of a gunshot wound to the abdomen. According to the official version of events, the man grabbed a detective’s pistol and shot himself during interrogation at a police station in Poprad. The case made it to the European Court of Human Rights 11 years later thanks to the efforts of the young man’s widow.

6 July 2001 – At a police station in the Central Slovakian town of Revúca, several police officers beat a 51-year-old Romani man, Karol Sendrei, so brutally that he died as a result of his injuries. Seven police officers were charged in the case and released six months later. Four of them were then convicted and given sentences ranging from four to eight and a half years in prison.

21 March 2009 – Police officers in Košice detained six Romani boys aged 10 -15 after they allegedly injured and robbed an older woman. At the police station, under the threat of corporal punishment and a constant torrent of verbal abuse, the police forced the boys to kiss each other, slap each other, and strip naked. The scenes of humiliation were recorded using a mobile telephone. Nine police officers were fired in connection with the crime. On 27 February 2015 all 10 of the current or former police officers prosecuted in connection with the crime were acquitted.

9 May 2010 – After a riot unit intervention in Tornal’a during the annual celebrations there to honor the victims of the Second World War, a 46-year-old Romani man died of suffocation after police officers allegedly used a disproportionate amount of teargas against him. According to witnesses, officers beat and kicked the man.

16 June 2012 – A former municipal police officer in Hurbanovo, southern Slovakia, shot a 44-year-old man, the man’s son and the man’s father-in-law with a weapon he was not licensed to use. Another son of the main victim survived a gunshot through the lung and his wife suffered a leg injury during the incident. The ex-officer said he wanted to "solve the problem of inadaptable inhabitants" by shooting them.

19 June 2013 – Police officers and riot police occupied the Romani settlement in Moldava nad Bodvou during the evening. Officers were allegedly looking for wanted persons there. Shortly after the police raid, however, occupants of the settlement claimed the officers broke into their homes for no reason, attacking children and women and reportedly using stun guns and tear gas.

2 April 2015 – Police officers allegedly beat up approximately 19 Romani people in the municipality of Vrbnica, Michalovce District, during a house-to-house search code-named "100". Medical attention was sought by 10 residents.

2 August 2015 – In the Romani settlement of the village of Rudňany in the Spišská Nová Ves district a conflict occurred between a group of local residents and police. Each side of the conflict describes what happened differently. According to police, a man from the settlement called emergency services because he feared for the life of his family, including his pregnant wife, because some local residents were assaulting them. According to a settlement resident, however, the conflict began between two brothers and after police officers arrived they began to raid the homes of people who had nothing to do with the conflict, dragging men out of their homes to "pacify" them, which resulted in an escalation of the situation.