A violent confrontation with animal protection activists broke out in a department store in the city center: the activists used pepper spray and attacked employees.
An action by animal protection activists escalated in a department store in downtown Munich on Saturday evening, October 26th. According to police, five activists – three women and two men – held up posters and chanted slogans about animal protection and against factory farming, whereupon security officers expelled them from the store. There was then an argument in which the activists sprayed pepper spray and hit two employees.
Accordingly, two employees aged 35 and 23 suffered hematomas as a result of the attack and the 35-year-old suffered a laceration to the back of the head. According to police, the two also complained of severe pain and irritation to their eyes and respiratory tract from the pepper spray. According to police, a total of eleven people were injured.
Some customers and two other employees had complaints caused by the pepper spray. The emergency services treated the injured on site and the police cleared the affected area of the department store as a precaution.
Using surveillance camera images, the police said they identified a group of suspects. The police arrested this group a little later on Münchner Freiheit, searched them and found a can of pepper spray, animal protection stickers and an action camera. One of the suspects wore a T-shirt with a print that police said drew a comparison between the Holocaust and the slaughter of animals.
The officers took personal details, fingerprints and photos of the 16 to 31 year old suspects from Vorarlberg in Austria, Lübeck, Munich, Kassel and Offenbach and then released them again. The state security agency is now investigating suspected grievous bodily harm and incitement to hatred.
According to the police, the Austrian had already been noticed several times before for acts of violence during actions and demonstrations. The remaining four animal protection activists from the group are also already known to the police, writes the “Münchener Abendzeitung”.
