Sweden neo-Nazis pummeled by fireworks, snowballs at rally
10 counter-demonstrators arrested after clashing with police; 2 people injured
Swedish police said 10 people were detained as a Swedish right-wing extremist group marched through central Stockholm while counter-demonstrators threw snowballs and fireworks at them.
Police spokesman Lars Bystrom said those detained were taken when counter-demonstrators briefly clashed with officers in the capital’s picturesque old city as they tried to reach the rally by the Nordic Resistance Movement.
A few hundred people, some with the movement’s green and white flags, walked in crisp, freezing weather.
Up to six times as many people staged a counter-demonstration nearby and some eventually broke out to try to block the right-wing group from crossing a bridge on their route. Large police forces, including mounted officers, kept the sides apart.
Two people were injured in the clashes between police and the anti-fascists.
Spokesman Lars Bystroem told TT news agency that a policeman was hit by a demonstrator, and a second individual was injured in circumstances that were unclear.
The NMR, set up in 1997, promotes an openly racist and anti-Semitic doctrine, and press commentators had questioned the wisdom of authorizing Saturday’s rally, given the likelihood of violence.