BRUSSELS —A senior police officer in Brussels, Belgium, was transferred from his post for the duration of an investigation into claims that he abused Jewish subordinates and denied the Holocaust.
So far, five of the 15 officers who had served under Commissioner Geert Verhoeyen at the canine police unit of Brussels Midi complained about his alleged hate speech in recent years against gays, foreigners and Jews, the Het Laatste Nieuws daily reported. The report was a follow-up to a story published earlier Wednesday about Verhoeyen by the BX1 television station.
One complainant, who has Jewish roots, said that Verhoeyen called him to his office in 2015 and played music that was played at Nazi death camps, according to Joel Rubinfeld, president of the Belgian League Against Antisemitism, or LBCA. A similar incident happened to another officer with Jewish roots in 2016, Rubinfeld said. One of the complainants’ grandparents was sent to a concentration camp.
The police Commissioner said the songs were “for real men.”
Rubinfeld considers that the ‘’intermediate” measure to provisionally remove the Commissioner is not enough: “It only moves the problem,” he said.