Four participants in the violent protests by opponents of corona measures in Schweinfurt were sentenced to probation and fines in an accelerated procedure on Monday. The mother of a four-year-old child who was slightly injured by pepper spray at a police cordon on Sunday was sentenced to six months probation by the Schweinfurt district court for assaulting law enforcement officers and resisting law enforcement officers, the judiciary announced. The court imposed suspended sentences of 12 and 8 months on two men for resistance, assault and bodily harm or attempted bodily harm, and a third defendant for resistance and insult a fine of 80 daily rates of 20 euros each.
During the demonstration on Sunday evening, eight police officers and several participants in the rally of the so-called "lateral thinkers" were injured.
The four-year-old girl was among the injured.
The Lower Franconian district chairman of the German Police Union (DPolG), Thorsten Grimm, said on Monday: "Abusing a child as a" protective shield "is an act of inhumanity." According to the Lower Franconian police headquarters, the child was caught in a pepper spray cloud when his mother did wanted to break through a police line.
It suffered eye irritation, was taken care of by medical staff from the police and after an eye wash was free of symptoms a few minutes later.
Bavaria's interior minister warns of radicalization
According to the police, several hundred people from the "lateral thinkers" and anti-vaccination scene in Schweinfurt had gathered for an unregistered rally on Sunday evening - including "numerous rioters" who stirred up the crowd. Officials were "insulted and spat at". When trying to break through police chains and barriers, they had eight police officers with "fists and kicks injured, sometimes moderately severe". The officers used batons and pepper spray. A 50-year-old attacker suffered a head wound that had to be treated in the hospital.
Bavaria's Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann (CSU) sees the risk of extremist crimes in view of the increasing radicalization of protests by corona deniers and vaccination opponents. “You have to take it seriously, it is a danger to our democracy. And that doesn't just depend on how many thousands of people are on the road, ”he told the German Press Agency. There is always the danger that an individual, incited by the hatred and agitation of others, will take action without commission. "We also know the phenomenon of spontaneous self-radicalization from Islamism."
Even if the number of radical demonstrators is still manageable, there is "unmistakable mobilization in the area of the extreme right," emphasized Herrmann.
It starts with lateral thinkers who don't believe in the state and who even want to override state institutions.
“I see a smooth transition here into the area of the AfD, the NPD and the so-called Third Way.
What they have in common is that they all try to pick up people from those who oppose vaccination and manipulate them ideologically.
That's a real problem. "