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| - Belgian police were investigating the death of an arrested suspect Monday in a case that provoked outcry and comparisons with the George Floyd case in the United States. Amateur footage circulating widely on social media shows the arrest of a 29-year-old Algerian man outside a cafe in the city of Antwerp on Sunday, with one officer kneeling on his back. According to a police spokesman, the man had been "very agitated" and had tried to strike people. Officers arriving at the scene within minutes observed that he had prior injury and was apparently intoxicated, he said. Medical assistance was called after the arrest, but he had lost consciousness before their arrival. An ambulance crew revived him and took him to hospital, where he later died, the spokesman said. But the manner of the arrest, which comes amid heightened tension over alleged police racism in Belgium and around the world in the wake of the US case, outraged people online. On Monday, the footage was trending on Belgian social media under the hashtag #JusticeForAkram. In May a 46-year-old black American man, George Floyd, died during his arrest in Minneapolis for allegedly passing a forged banknote. Footage of the incident showed a police officer kneeling on his neck for eight minutes. Floyd's death triggered protest in America and around the world, including in Belgium, where anger at police racism fed into a campaign against symbols of the country's brutal colonial history in Africa. alm/dc/pdw/pma
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