A man died Wednesday (September 9) in Colombia after receiving repeated electric shocks administered by police officers who immobilized him on the ground, authorities said.
The scene of the arrest, broadcast on social media and in which the man on the ground and witnesses begged the police to stop administering the dumps, shocked the country.
Read also: Colombia: new massacre, the ninth in two weeks
The nearly two-minute footage shows two Colombian police bikers, both helmeted, knocking 46-year-old lawyer Javier Ordoñez to the ground and then repeatedly giving him long shocks with their electric pulse pistols.
"
Please stop,
" we hear the man on the ground repeating.
Witnesses to the scene also called out to the police: "
Please stop, we are filming you
" with a cell phone.
According to Bogota's police chief Colonel Necton Borja, officers were responding to disorder caused by "
alcoholic people
" and Javier Ordoñez tried "
to hit the police
" before being
knocked
down.
The colonel estimated that the victim "
was subjected to a non-lethal weapon
" before being transported to the police station where she presented "
medical complications
".
He was taken to hospital and died some time later.
A "police abuse"
The mayor of Bogota, Claudia Lopez, considered that this is "
police abuse
".
On Twitter, she called for "
an exemplary sentence
" against the police and called for "
a deep and serious restructuring within the police force
".
Defense Minister Carlos Holmes Trujillo told reporters that "
the two agents are already the subject of a disciplinary and criminal investigation
".
Colombian police have in the past been implicated in several abuse of force scandals.
In November 2019, Dilan Cruz, an 18-year-old young man who was participating in an anti-government demonstration was fatally wounded in the head by a packet of lead balls fired by a special forces agent.
In August 2011, a street artist, Diego Becerra, was shot dead while painting graffiti in Bogota.
The United Nations warned at the end of February about the killings and other alleged abuses committed by soldiers and police in Colombia.
Alberto Brunori, representative of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in Colombia, noted that in 13 cases of death involving state agents, "
it was observed
" use "
unnecessary and / or disproportionate force
”.
See also
- Colombia in the grip of a spiral of violence, the UN counts 33 massacres