LONDON: Seven people have been charged following a mass pro-Palestinian march and a far-right counter-protest on Saturday when more than 140 people were arrested, the police said on Sunday.
Skirmishes broke out between police and the far-right groups gathered to protest against the demonstration taking place on Armistice Day, the anniversary of the end of World War One, when Britain commemorates its war dead.
London’s Metropolitan police said investigations were continuing into a “number of other incidents” and that the seven were charged with different offenses, such as criminal damage, resisting arrest, possession of an offensive weapon, drugs possession, being drunk and disorderly, and assault.
“We have teams of officers who continue to build cases against those in custody and launch investigations into those who come to our attention when images and videos are shared on social media,” said Deputy Assistant Commissioner Laurence Taylor, who led Saturday’s policing operation.
Also on Sunday, thousands turned out to march against anti-Semitism in Paris, after days of bickering by political parties over who should take part and a surge in anti-Semitic incidents across France.
“Our order of the day today is ... the total fight against anti-Semitism which is the opposite of the values of the republic,” Senate speaker Gerard Larcher, who organized the demonstration with lower house speaker Yael Braun-Pivet, told broadcaster LCP before the marchers set off.
Tensions have been rising in the French capital in the wake of the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas on Israel.
On the eve of the march, President Emmanuel Macron condemned the “unbearable resurgence of unbridled anti-Semitism” in the country.
“A France where our Jewish citizens are afraid is not France. A France where French people are afraid because of their religion or their origin is not France,” he wrote in a letter published Saturday in the daily Le Parisien.
