31/08/2004
NEWS STORY
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These are the shocking scenes just moments before the start of Sunday's Belgian Grand Prix.
While race fans will remember Formula One's return to Spa-Francorchamps for its many incidents, and the return to the top step of the podium for Kimi Raikkonen and McLaren, a number of F1 photographers, going about their legitimate business, will remember the event for the hostility shown by Belgian police.
Having set up in a special FIA approved area, the photographers - all fully accredited by the sport's governing body and clearly wearing the requisite tabards, gillets and passes, prepared for the all-important start of the race. Some of the photographers had been in place for almost an hour.
As the cars headed off on the warm-up lap, a dozen Belgian military police - none of them with the correct credentials - entered the area and forced the photographers to leave.
The (legitimate) protests of the photographers were met with threats of arrest, indeed one of the policemen can be clearly seen preparing to use his handcuffs on veteran F1 photographer Mark Sutton.
In another picture, top Canadian photographer Muriel Brousseau can be seen being forcibly removed from the area by two burly policemen, traumatised by the incident, she subsequently spent forty-minutes in the FIA media centre sobbing her heart out.
To make matters worse, once the police had removed the photographers, who (we stress again) were fully authorised to be in this official FIA enclosure, the boys in blue proceeded to use their mobile phones to capture the action.
A spokesman for the FIA confirmed that a full investigation had been launched. The FIA would not comment further on the incident or on the implications for the future of the Belgian Grand Prix. Privately it's understood that the FIA is furious that authorized photographers in possession of all the correct passes were treated in this way.
When the Belgian GP was dropped from the calendar for 2003, there was serious concern that this sounded the 'death knell' for the region in terms of tourism. At the time, a local hotel owner claimed that all that foreigners know of Belgium is its Grand Prix at Spa Francorchamps, and the convicted child rapist Marc Dutroux.
"Should the Grand Prix be taken away," she said, "the only thing we have is Dutroux."
The Dutroux case led to mass protests in Belgium concerning police and legal incompetence. It emerged during his trial that the police had searched Dutroux' house three times, but failed to locate the captives.
Perhaps if their counterparts had approached their investigation with the same relish as the military police employed at Spa on Sunday, Mr Dutroux might have been brought to justice a little earlier.
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Mark Sutton about to be handcuffed
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Bull Boy Tactics
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Muriel Brousseau is manhandled by police
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Out you go!