The case of police brutality against a Roma boy that took place in 2010 at a police station in a village near the Eastern Slovak city of Košice has not been adequately investigated. This is the conclusion of the European Court of Human Rights which granted him €1,500 in financial compensation plus another €3,000 for the reimbursement of court fees. The Roma boy who was arrested by police together with other two fellows on suspicion of theft spent 13 hours at the police station. During this time they were allegedly not allowed to sit down, eat or drink and were slapped and punched by policemen. The Slovak police inspection had rejected a complaint submitted by his mother in January 2011 as being "unfounded". The ones submitted to the Slovak General Prosecutor's Office and Constitutional Court had a similar fate.
According to his legal representative Vanda Durbaková, the European Court of Human Rights confirmed that Slovak state bodies failed to investigate the case properly, which has seriously violated the man's rights. The European Court criticised the fact that instead of investigating the claims, the inspection shifted the burden of proof onto the plaintiff and made no effort to investigate the incongruencies in the various testimonies regarding the injuries that the boy reportedly suffered in the beating by police. The boy's criminal complaint concerning the failure of the police to inform his legal representatives about the apprehension, failure to provide him with water and food and lack of questioning in the wake of apprehension was turned down without explanation on the grounds that the law enforcement bodies committed no wrongdoing. This part of the complaint was ignored even by the Slovak Constitutional Court, concluded the European Court of Human Rights.
