Police in The Hague are complaining to the president of the International Court of Justice about a black, female lawyer who accused them of ‘racially-motivated police brutality’ after her arrest for a traffic offence on Tuesday morning.

Chaka Laguerre, 30, who is from the US and has a 10-month clerkship at the UN organisation, posted an impassioned protest about her alleged treatment on Facebook on Wednesday evening.

The post, originally illustrated with a photograph of her in a hospital bed, has gone viral, with more than 4,200 reactions and 1,100 comments. She claims that she had been walking her bicycle across the street on a red light to get to work, was stopped by police, arrested for being unable to provide identification, and then ‘roughed up’.

It has been reported that local council member Fatima Faïd, spokeswoman for emancipation and integration, is looking into her case.

Laguerre, who writes as Chaka Shakira on Facebook, says two officers dragged her into a police car with what she describes as unnecessary violence: ‘I kept explaining that I am an expat working at the Court, that I did not know that walking across the street was a crime, that I did not do anything wrong, and begged them to speak to the Court security,’ she writes.

‘Both officers kept attacking me anyway. I screamed out for help…Dutch people stood around on the streets, watching and recording the incident on their phones, but no one tried to help me.’

She claims she was bundled into the car, in tears and on the point of blacking out, put in a holding cell and refused a phone call for more than an hour, when the chief of police said she had been kicking and spitting on officers. She eventually called colleagues from the International Court of Justice, and was released but told she would have to pay a fine.

The former Miss Jamaica added: ‘What hurts me most is that I survived 30 years in America – never had an altercation with the police, never been arrested, never even gotten a ticket – and came to The Hague, the “City of Justice,” where I was brutalized by two male police officers, as a lawyer working at the International Court of Justice, and on the very grounds of that Court…This has been the experience of many people of color in The Hague. And this will continue to be the experience of people of color in The Hague – unless we speak out.’

But after Laguerre posted an account of her arrest on Facebook, the police response stepped up. A press release late on Thursday morning said that they disputed her version of events – watching CCTV footage of the incident, which they have not released – and will formally complain to the court about her social media post.

‘The woman’s allegation that there was racist and violent police action is totally unfounded,’ says a police press release. ‘The police chief of The Hague unit will submit a complaint to the president of the International Court of Justice against the woman concerned for her allegations against the police in which she suggests that there was racist police brutality….’

‘Camera images show that the woman wheels her bike across an intersection, while the lights are red. A city bus…misses the woman by a hair. Police agents called to the woman from their car but the images show that the woman after a brief response turned her head and went on her way.’

It says she was taken to the precinct after she failed to produce identification documents and resisted arrest, and was only held for one hour and 20 minutes. Unusually, they have put out a version in English.

The International Court of Justice, Laguerre and Faïd have not responded to requests for comment.