The Belgian footballer Stephane Omeonga, former Genoa player, reported being a “victim of police brutality” in Italy on Christmas Day, when some officials forced him to get off a plane bound for Israel at Fiumicino airport, Italy’s largest. “On a flight between Rome and Tel Aviv, after boarding the plane and taking my seat, a flight attendant approached me about an alleged problem with my documents and asked me to leave the plane,” Omeonga explains on his social networks and plays for Bnei Sakhnin, the main Arab-Israeli club.
After “calmly asking what the problem was,” “they called the police, they handcuffed me and forced me off the plane,” said the player, who reported that once he was “out of sight of the witnesses, violently the police threw me to the ground, they hit me and one put his knee on my head.
“Then they took me to the airport in a police vehicle, handcuffed like a criminal,” added the player, who also published a video where you can see the police intervention on the plane. Omeonga explained that he was denied medical treatment and left for hours in a dark room, without food or water, “in a state of total humiliation.”
According to police sources, agents deployed in Fiumicino intervened to remove the footballer from the plane because he was on Israel’s “black list” and, therefore, was not welcome in the country.
He is at risk of a new accusation of defamation
Following the incident, the former player of Avellino and Pescara was accused of fighting a public official and causing injuries and now risks a new accusation of defamation, according to local media. In his publication, the football player claims that he found out after his release that an agent filed a complaint against him for injuries “allegedly caused during detention, even though he was handcuffed.”
In the video posted on Instagram, the footballer can be seen being approached by agents and forced to get off the plane, although according to police sources there was a prior conversation of around 40 minutes between the agents and player to convince him to leave the plane, which It didn’t work.
Source: La Verdad
I’m Rose Herman and I work as an author for Today Times Live. My expertise lies in writing about sports, a passion of mine that has been with me since childhood. As part of my job, I provide comprehensive coverage on everything from football to tennis to golf.
