A detainee in Antwerp prison was seriously injured and taken to hospital on Tuesday after torture by his cellmates. writes the Belgian Public Prosecution Service. Various Belgian media report Wednesday that the 41-year-old man has serious burns and is in danger of dying.
Five of the man’s cellmates have been arrested. The Public Prosecution Service has announced an investigation into the incident and suspects three of the cellmates of “attempted murder, rape with aggravating circumstance of torture, torture and degrading treatment.” The two others are accused of not intervening.
The suspects took images that they then distributed via the social medium Snapchat according to The Gazet van Antwerp it shows the prisoner being anally raped with a broomstick. The man’s face, which has been rendered unrecognizable, has been damaged. There are also images of him having to eat a sandwich with feces from his cellmates. They call the 41-year-old man a pedophile.
According to De Standaard, the man was in pre-trial detention for the attempted murder of his ex’s new boyfriend. He had previously also been convicted of sexual offences.
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The torture had been going on for days when the prisoner was found in his cell on Tuesday evening. “The injuries suffered by the victim show that they were not the result of one incident. So it could be that there had been abuse and torture for several days,” says Kristof Aerts, spokesperson for the Antwerp public prosecutor’s office. broadcaster VRT NWS.
It is still unclear how the torture could continue for so long without intervention from any of the prison guards. But this question is causing great unrest among prison guard unions, among others, who blame the fact that the abuse was not identified more quickly on the overcrowding of prisons and shortages of guards. Minister of Justice and Security Paul Van Tigchelt, from the liberal party Open VLD, came under fire on Wednesday during a debate about the incident in the Justice Committee of the Belgian parliament. The New Flemish Alliance, the largest party, and Vlaams Belang are calling for the minister’s resignation.
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