Belgian Police Guilty of Deportation Death

Belgium suspended its policy of forcibly deporting failed asylum seekers until further notice yesterday after four police officers were found guilty of "involuntarily" suffocating a Nigerian woman to death.

The case of Sémira Adamu, a 20-year-old asylum seeker who died at the hands of five Belgian policemen in 1998, has become synonymous with police brutality.

She died during a botched deportation attempt aboard a Togo-bound plane after police employed the "cushion technique" to restrain her.

The manner of her death forced the country's then interior minister, Louis Tobback, to resign. But it was only yesterday that the officers involved had to take responsibility for their actions.

A Brussels court handed down suspended sentences to four of the five officers, ignoring their pleas that they were only following orders.

The most senior of the men was given a 14-month suspended sentence and the other three received one-year sentences. A fifth man was acquitted. The court ordered the Belgian state to pay undisclosed damages to the dead woman's family.

Hein Diependaele, a lawyer for Ms Adamu's family, welcomed the judgment. "It is symbolic, but it shows something went seriously wrong," he told the VRT TV network.

Belgium's police union immediately announced its members would stop forcibly repatriating refugees for the time being and would seek talks with the country's interior minister to discuss the government's policy.

Most of Ms Adamu's ordeal was caught on a police camera and the tape was shown in court. The video showed that her face had been pushed deep into a pillow to restrain her, an elbow was shoved into her back, her ankles were shackled, and three of the five men did their utmost to ensure she could not move a muscle.

She stopped breathing after seven or eight minutes while the officers were seen to be joking among themselves.

When asked why they had used so much force, one told the court it was necessary "to avoid disturbing other passengers".

Although such use of a cushion has since been outlawed, Amnesty International says Belgian police officers continue to use unacceptable amounts of force.

Ms Adamu was fleeing a forced marriage to a violent 65-year-old man in Nigeria who already had four wives.