After the renewed occupation of the construction site for the planned Wiener Stadtstraße on Wednesday, 58 of the 95 environmental activists arrested were in police custody overnight. This number was as of Thursday morning, but it is getting smaller every hour, explained police spokesman Markus Dittrich. Persons may be detained for a maximum of 24 hours purely to establish their identity, but the surveys continue. There were 111 ads in total.
With 108 reports, the majority concerned administrative offences, Dittrich described. The main concern was the lack of proof of identity. Three charges had criminal grounds, including an arrest announced the day before for resisting state authority when activists tried to climb over a construction site fence.
With the re-occupation of the construction site cleared by the police in February, the environmentalists wanted to draw attention to their concerns in the run-up to the Vienna SPÖ party conference on Saturday, as Lucia Steinwender, spokeswoman for “LobauBleibt”, emphasized. The immediate halt to construction of the so-called city street and the expansion of cycle paths and public transport in the affected district of Donaustadt were demanded.
