19 anti-Israel activists detained after blockade in campus building in Sweden

Protesters demand Stockholm’s Royal Technology Institute cut ties with Israeli universities; arrests come week after clash with police in unauthorized rally at top Swedish school

By AP and ToI Staff 7 June 2024, 10:48 pm Edit
Police surround a building in Sweden's Royal Institute of Technology where anti-Israel activists had barricaded themselves, as protesters' supporters gather, in Stockholm, Sweden, June 7, 2024. (Screen capture: X, used in accordance with Clause 27a of the Copyright Law)
Police surround a building in Sweden's Royal Institute of Technology where anti-Israel activists had barricaded themselves, as protesters' supporters gather, in Stockholm, Sweden, June 7, 2024. (Screen capture: X, used in accordance with Clause 27a of the Copyright Law)

Swedish police detained 19 pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel activists who had barricaded themselves in the country’s main technical education and research university on Friday.

After two hours, police carried out the masked activists from the third floor of a Royal Institute of Technology building in Stockholm. They are likely to be prosecuted for trespassing and disobeying the police, according to law enforcement.

At around noon, the activists blocked the entrance of a student building at the institute, known by its Swedish acronym KTH, with chairs and tables. Some shouted “Free Palestine” and hung Palestinian flags in the windows.

People supporting the activists and a large contingent of law enforcement personnel, including officers with dogs and mounted police, quickly gathered outside KTH, which is located north of downtown Stockholm.

Anti-Israel campus demonstrations have intensified in recent months, with college students in the United States, France, Ireland and Switzerland, among others, occupying administration buildings to demand their institutions cut ties with Israel over the country’s war in Gaza.

The war began on October 7, when thousands of Hamas-led terrorists stormed southern Israel to kill nearly 1,200 people and take over 250 hostages.

On Instagram, the KTH activists said they occupied the building to pressure their school into ending its collaboration with Israeli universities.

Last week, a handful of pro-Palestinian activists were briefly detained in connection with an unauthorized demonstration outside KTH.

The school describes itself as the largest institution in Sweden for technical education and research and is a leading technical university internationally.

In the past months, law enforcement in the United States and in Europe have forcefully removed encampments and barricades where pro-Palestinian demonstrations have blocked the main entrances and other access points on campuses.

Some anti-Israel activists at the University of Copenhagen, whose encampment has been taken down, moved on Wednesday to the Danish capital’s City Hall Square, where they set up an encampment to demand that Denmark stop exporting arms to Israel.

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