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Victoria Mindova

Like almost any public protest in Greece, today's meetings against the visit of German Chancellor Angela Merkel ended with clashes between protesters and police.

Shortly after three o’clock in the afternoon, the first fire and gas bombs exploded. The riot forces fired them at a group of protesters who were trying to push the barrier in front of the parliament's facade. The mass of people scattered in the surrounding streets of Syntagma Square and the majority of the protesters were pushed along Panepistimiou Street towards Omonia Square. Youths with masks responded with stones and pieces of pavement. The police took the offensive and detained three participants in the clashes in front of demonstrators’ eyes.

Their supporters wanted to learn the name of one of the detainees in order to be able to send a lawyer to the regional police station, where he was expected to be taken. The detainee did not respond and some protesters suspected that he might be a plainclothes police officer involved in the sabotage of the protest.

Security measures on the day of Angela Merkel’s visit are too stringent to allow the usual suspects (the anarchists) to break in and start throwing Molotov bombs, a local journalist told GRReporter.

The clashes between protesters and police outside the parliament broke out again for a short while at about five o’clock in the afternoon after which all the people dispersed. At 7:30 pm, the municipal cleaning workers were already cleaning the streets around Syntagma Square.

The final number of detainees on the day of Angela Merkel’s visit reached 217. 24 people were arrested. Greek media report that more than half of the people detained by the police were students.