During a security check at the entrance to the House of Europe, a special device indicated the presence of “traces of explosives” on the journalist's hands.
The well-known Ukrainian journalist, editor of “European Truth” Serhiy Sidorenko was detained by the police in Brussels on suspicion of preparing an explosion at EU summit. He was held at the police station for 5 hours, and his hotel room was searched.
Sergey Sidorenko himself reported this curious incident, which occurred the day before, on December 18, on his Facebook page.
According to him, during the check at the entrance to the House of Europe, where the summit is taking place, some kind of detector went off, after which they took swabs from his hands. A special device indicated the presence of “traces of explosives” on the journalist's hands.
For further checks, the guards called in a specialist with a specially trained dog to detect explosives, but, of course, he did not find anything dangerous. Despite this, the police decided to show excessive zeal and behaved rather rudely – they snatched the phone from his hands, put special bags on his hands, searched his things, and confiscated the key card to the hotel room. The police refused to call the consul, explaining that he would come to court.
“At that point, they already knew for sure that I was a real journalist – they checked everything, googled, asked me about my trips, checked with my passport, and so on,” Sidorenko noted.
While the journalist's hotel room was being searched, he was being held at the police station. Although the search was, of course, fruitless, the detainee was not released immediately, since the detention procedure required an interrogation, which had to be conducted in the presence of a Ukrainian interpreter. In the end, the police agreed to communicate with the help of an interpreter from English, which the detained journalist speaks.
“The detention lasted a little over 5 hours in total – the “red” test on the detector went off at 18:48 (I remembered the time because I had to write it down in the log, really!), and I left the station after midnight. True, as a bonus, they gave me a police car to drive from the police station to the press conference [of Volodymyr Zelensky] with flashing lights,” Sidorenko described the outcome of the situation.
As the police later explained, the probable reason for the detector to go off could have been that the Ukrainian journalist, before going through the security check, had a snack on a sandwich with sausage that he was holding in his hands. It was for this reason that “traces of nitrates” were found on his hands, which, according to their standards, are a sign that a person is working with explosives. In addition to sausage, some hand sanitizers can cause the same effect.
“My fingerprints and a full-face profile photo against a ruler on the wall remained in the Belgian databases – everything, just like in the movies. And I have a copy of the interrogation protocol and truly unforgettable memories,” noted Sergei Sidorenko.
Recall that yesterday, December 18, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky arrived in Brussels, where he has important talks scheduled with European partners.
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