CCTV footage shows supervisor at Tallinn restaurant beating customers as security guards look on

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A supervisor working at the Amigo restaurant on the ground floor of the Sokos Hotel Viru in the Estonian capital Tallinn has been seen on a security camera recording beating two customers in a holding cell in the Viru-Keskus shopping mall.
      The assault was made public by the Estonian newspaper Postimees, which released a videotape of the beating on Friday. In the tape, security guards are seen taking the customers into the cell and looking on as the supervisor hit and kicked the men who were lying on the floor.
      Amigo is a night club in the centre of Tallinn, which is frequented by many Finns. The Finnish company SOK owns both the Hotel Viru and the restaurant Amigo. The owner of the entire Viru-Keskus is owned by Pontos, a subsidiary of the Finnish company, SRV Viitoset Ltd.
     
The tape, which was recorded in the early hours of September 14th this year, shows how the two men were pushed into the holding cell, which is intended for keeping drunk and disorderly clients until the police arrive to deal with them.
      On the 26-minute video, a blonde-haired man, who was dressed in the black vest worn by Amigo supervisors beat and kicked the men as they were lying on the floor.
      In addition to using his fists and his feet, the supervisor appears to be using a large flashlight as a weapon. The men spent an hour in the holding facility, between three and four in the morning.
     
At the end of the tape, the two men appeard to bend down over victims and to photograph them with their mobile phone cameras.
      On Friday, Sokos Hotel Viru terminated the employment contract of the supervisor seen on the tape. He could be easily identified on the grainy footage. The security guards shown on the video will also no longer be working for the restaurant.
      Outi Välimäki, director of the Sokos Hotel Viru, could not say on Friday why the recording of the beating had been lost for a short time, and ended up in the hands of Postimees.
      Regional prosecutors are currently investigating both the beating and the disappearance of the video.
     
The lawyer of the victims, Aleksander Vares, says that the dispute between the customers and the personnel was apparently caused by language problems. The two corporate managers, aged about 30, speak Russian as their mother tongue, an did not understand the intricacies of the Estonian that the personnel spoke.
      "They speak Estonian, but the orders given by the personnel were formulated in a complicated manner", Vares noted.
      The two refused to go from the restaurant to the holding facility without resistance, and a fight broke out in the foyer of the restaurant. After the altercation, the police and an ambulance arrived, having been summoned by the victims. The two were taken to a hospital emergency room they plan to seek damages from Sokos Hotel Viru in court.


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