ANTWERP –
The Antwerp court has started an investigation into abhorrent torture practices in Antwerp’s Begijnenstraat. Detainees allegedly raped and tortured a cellmate for days, after which the victim had to be taken to hospital in life-threatening condition.
“I made mistakes. I will pay on Monday,” screams a black and blue, completely naked man, as he looks desperately into the camera of his tormentors. Those tormentors can’t stop having fun. “You are now going to pay in kind. You are going to pay a lot in kind,” they say. The next image shows the victim screaming while his cellmates anally rape him with a broomstick.
The above fragment is one of the most disgusting images that were taken in recent days in the overcrowded prison in Begijnenstraat, and which started circulating in the crime scene last night.
Beaten to a pulp
The videos show how a number of detainees torture their new cellmate – according to them, a pedophile. The man’s face is beaten to a pulp and the man is forced to strip naked. The cellmates can’t stop laughing, while the victim lies on the floor writhing in pain when the broomstick is pushed dozens of centimeters into his anus. The torturers also force the man to eat a sandwich with their feces. The man gags, to the amusement of the cellmates.
Worst case of violence ever
The torture victim was taken to hospital on Tuesday evening after the prison discovered what was happening in the cell. The victim, named RJ, was in a life-threatening condition.
In an internal letter to the staff and the unions, director An Janssens writes that she has never experienced such a serious case of violence among detainees. The five suspected torturers have been distributed to other cells pending investigation. The cell where the victim was tortured for hours, possibly even days, has been sealed for trace evidence.
Staking
A 24-hour strike started in the prison on Sunday evening at 10 p.m. The torture allegedly started before the strike, but continued during the strike and after the strike without anyone noticing. Or without anyone having intervened.
The prison unions will hold a press conference on Wednesday about the case that “defies all imagination”. According to the unions, the affair is a direct result of years of government mismanagement of prisons. “A direct consequence of what we as trade unions have been shouting from the rooftops for years… This is going wrong! The overcrowding and understaffing of staff has created a horrific scene about which we, the representative trade unions, would like to hold a press conference.”