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Police in firing line as turbulence continues

Swedish police experienced the latest in a series of busy nights on Sunday as gangs of youths created disturbances in the suburbs of Stockholm and Malmö.

Published: 29 December 2008 13:06 CET

A 19-year-old man has been detained in Stockholm after a police officer was injured while police conducted a search on a group of young people in the Vårby Gård suburb. The exact cause or extent of the officer’s injuries is not yet known.

The group was searched after an evening spent setting off fireworks and throwing car tyres onto subway tracks in the locality.

“Traffic had to be stopped occasionally,” said police spokesman Anders Lantz, who added that the weekend had been marked by disturbances in the Vårby, Alby, Fittja and Norsborg suburbs. Police said they planned to increase their presence in the area on Monday evening.

The Malmö suburb of Oxie has also experience turbulence in recent nights, with gangs of youths throwing stones and aiming fireworks at windows and balconies. A police vehicle also had its front window broken.

“It continued on Sunday night. When we were out there on a case someone threw a rock at the windscreen and smashed it,” police spokesman Pete Martin told Skånska Dagbladet.

Malmö police said the trouble was sparked by a group of around forty young people.

RIOT

Dozens of police injured during riots at Berlin’s last hold-out squat

Sixty police officers were injured in riots that erupted Wednesday at one of Berlin's last squats ahead of disputed fire protection checks on the building.

Published: 17 June 2021 09:31 CEST
Dozens of police injured during riots at Berlin's last hold-out squat
Burning barricades in the Rigaer St. on June 16th. Photo: dpa | Andreas Rabenstein

Its facade covered in murals and anti-capitalist graffiti, the occupied building at 94 Rigaer Strasse is among the squats that mushroomed across the city after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Numerous attempts have been made in recent years to clear the squat, but each time they have ended in violence.

Ahead of Thursday’s planned fire protection inspection, police had declared the zone a restricted area and banned all demonstrations in the environs.

But as officers arrived on the scene to secure the area, they were met with a hail of stones flung from roofs and the street.

Firecrackers were also hurled from windows and barricades set up by far-left activists were set on fire.

Police said officers were attacked by “around 200 people from the street and from the roof with stones”.

“Material was brought on the street and set on fire,” they added on Twitter.

As water cannons were brought in to put out the fires, officers partially withdrew from the scene.

But they later returned, backed by climbing experts, who were helping them get on the roof of the building to remove stones placed there by residents, added police.

Officials have planned a heavy deployment lasting into Thursday.

Berlin’s interior minister Andreas Geisel vowed a tough crackdown on the militants, saying there can be no special treatment or a “law for Rigaer Strasse”.

Rigaer 94 has been branded by Germany’s domestic security service as the centre of Berlin’s anarchist scene.

While some want to see the counter-culture bastion wiped off the capital’s map, others have defended it as a vestige of an old Berlin rapidly disappearing as property prices and rents rise sharply.

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