Thursday, March 16, 2006

Latvian Legion march results in 60 arrests

Here's a follow-up on the post I did yesterday about the Latvian Legionnaires' march in the Latvian capital this afternoon.

From AFP:

Around 60 people were arrested in the Latvian capital as police thwarted a bid by extremists to hijack Legionnaire's Day, when veterans of Latvia's Waffen SS unit remember their fallen colleagues.


"Around 60 people have been detained. We didn't ask them if they were nationalists or pro-Russian radicals. They were detained because they did not follow police orders," police spokeswoman Ieva Zvidre told AFP.

Right-wing Latvian nationalists have in the past used Legionnaires' Day to honour soldiers who fought in a unit of Nazi Germany's Waffen SS in World War II, while left-wing, pro-Russian groups decry the controversial day as the glorification of fascism.

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