Athens braced for more protests

**The Greek capital Athens is braced for more protests as the country marks the first anniversary of the fatal police shooting of a 15-year-old boy.**Schoolchildren are due to march through Athens later, and smaller demonstrations are expected elsewhere.

Dozens of people were arrested over the weekend as police fought running street battles with youths who threw stones and set fire to rubbish bins.

Six thousand police have been deployed on the streets of the capital.

The family and friends of teenager Alexandros Grigoropoulos held a memorial service in the Exarchia district of Athens on Sunday evening to mark a year since his killing.

They appealed for calm, but posters had appeared in the capital saying: “We won’t forget, we won’t forgive.”

Dozens of arrests

At one point about 200 masked demonstrators were holed up in Athens’ neoclassical university building, smashing marble chunks off the steps to use as missiles against police.

Meanwhile at Athens Polytechnic, clashes continued late into Sunday night , with youths throwing stones and bottles at police, who responded with tear gas.

Dozens of shop windows were smashed, cars were damaged and on Monday morning the capital’s Syntagma Square was left littered with rocks and piles of smouldering rubbish.

Some 26 people were arrested in Athens and another dozen after protests in other cities on Sunday, police said. That was in addition to 80 arrested on Saturday.

AT THE SCENE
Malcolm Brabant, BBC News, AthensPolice officers corralled demonstrators into restricted areas and denied them the chance to run amok. Snatch squads on motorbikes roamed the streets and carried out a number of arrests.Some officers were pulled from their machines, and there were reports of bike riding policemen lashing out at people with their truncheons.

The government has carried out a number of reforms designed to give the police a more human face. But these clashes will not have won them any friends amongst Greek youths.

Many young people, who had their first taste of rebellion last year, remain angry with the authorities.

The overwhelming perception of teenagers and university students is that the force remains institutionally violent.In pictures: Greek violence

Christos Kittas, the dean of Athens University, was among 30 people injured on Sunday after youths broke into university offices, authorities said.

Earlier in Thessaloniki - Greece’s second-largest city - demonstrators threw petrol bombs at police and smashed the storefront of a Starbucks cafe, Associated Press reported.

But the protests have been nothing like the two weeks of riots sparked by the killing last year, says the BBC’s Malcolm Brabant in Athens.

To head off trouble, riot police had carried out a series of raids on Saturday across Athens, reportedly arresting scores of people.

The demonstrations marked a dramatic change in police tactics, says our correspondent, as they employed a 21st Century version of the cavalry charge using riot police on motorbikes.

Greece’s government had warned it would have a zero-tolerance policy towards violence, and has rejected allegations of heavy-handedness from left-wing groups.

Police said up to 150 foreign anarchists arrived over the weekend from Italy, France and other European countries.

Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou had acknowledged the weekend was a “crucial moment” for his new socialist government and for the nation.

Two police officers have been charged with the murder and attempted murder of Alexandros Grigoropoulos. Their trial is due to begin in the New Year.

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