2009-12-14
Danish police used teargas to restore order after disturbances broke out at a detention centre where scores of climate change protesters were being held, a spokesman says.
Police spokesman Henrik Moeller Jakobsen said on Monday that the “incident” on Sunday night was triggered when a number of detainees “used a bench as a battering ram to force open the door” at the centre in Copenhagen.
“The police used a small amount” of teargas to restore calm, he told AFP.
Nearly 260 people were arrested on Sunday during a protest which had been called by the Climate Action Justice coalition on the sidelines of the ongoing UN climate summit which is being held in the Danish capital until Friday.
According to two of the detainees, members of the extreme leftist group Modkraft, “hundreds” of people were involved in the disturbance and the police responded by confiscating everything in their cells, including water and bedding.
Danish authorities arrested more than 1,200 environmental activists at protests on both Saturday and Sunday.
Deputies passed new legislation ahead of the climate conference allowing preventative detention, under which people can be held by police for up to 12 hours.