Masked youths attacked the riot police headquarters in Athens Dec. 16, throwing petrol bombs and stones, damaging police vehicles parked outside. Elsewhere in the city, schoolchildren blocked streets, and scores of teenagers halted traffic outside the main court complex. (AP, Dec. 16) Protesters also stormed a studio of the state NET TV network, breaking into a newscast and unfurling a black banner reading: "Stop watching television, take to the streets." The newscast had been broadcasting statements by Prime Minister Kostas Karamanlis on the riots that have rattled Greece since the Dec. 6 police shooting of a teenage boy. NET president Christos Panagopoulos called the incident "a premeditated act that went beyond all measures of social tolerance and protest." (NYT, Dec. 16)

Italy's Interior Minister Roberto Maroni of the anti-immigrant Northern League met with protests after proposing a moratorium on the building of mosques in the wake of arrests on Dec. 2 of two Moroccans suspected of plotting terrorist attacks—one of whom was a preacher at an "unofficial" Milan mosque. The left-wing opposition and Italian Muslim leaders criticized the proposed legislation, which would halt the building of mosques without state oversight. A high-ranking Vatican official, Msgr. Gianfranco Ravasi, the president of the Pontifical Council for Culture, said he was in favor of allowing new mosques provided the state could ensure they would be used for religious purposes.

Greek protesters Dec. 13 attacked a police station and ministry building as well as shops and banks in Athens with petrol bombs in an eighth day of protests following the killing of 15-year-old Alexandros Grigoropoulos by police. Several hundred protesters set up burning barricades and attacked police with rocks and flares. The Exarchia district, where the police station was fire-bombed, and the area around Athens Polytechnic University remained the centers of street-fighting. Hundreds of stores have been smashed and looted, and more than 200 people have been arrested in the unrest so far.

Protests against the killing of a youth by police in Athens spread across Europe Dec. 11, as street-fighting in Greece entered its sixth day. At least 30 were arrested in Copenhagen, as masked youth hurled bottles and paint bombs at buildings, police cars and officers. Eleven were arrested, and police officers reportedly injured, in clashes in Madrid and Barcelona. In Moscow and Rome, protesters threw petrol bombs at the Greek embassies. In neighbouring Istanbul, protesters splashed red paint over the facade of the Greek consulate. And in Athens and Thessaloniki, protesters and police continued to trade hurled rocks and tear-gas cannisters, with more shops and banks damaged and windows smashed. The major Greek trade unions have taken up the issue, calling for "the democratization of the police and an end to violent and arbitrary acts by state organs." (The Telegraph, London Times, AFP, Dec. 11)

Critical Mass scores a win over Scotland Yard. From The Telegraph, Dec. 2:

Critical mass can carry on cycling
There is no need for the organisers of a mass cycle ride to give the police notice of their planned destination when there are no organisers and the destination is unplanned, the law lords ruled today.

Last weekend, presumed neo-Nazis firebombed the Cyclops autonomous social center in the Stockholm district of Högdalen, burning the building down. Two days later, on Dec. 1, presumed right-wing militants poured in gasoline through the mail slot into the apartment of a young couple and their child, and set it on fire. The couple are active in the anarcho-syndicalist Swedish Central Workers' Organization (Sveriges Arbetares Central Organisation-SAC), and had recently been "exposed" on the Swedish neo-Nazi website Info-14. All three survived, by climbing down from the balcony of their thrid-floor apartment. (Anarkisterna, Stockholm, Dec. 3)

 AA youth uprising spread in Greece for a second day Dec. 7, with thousands battling police in Athens and Thessaloniki, despite the arrest of two officers over the killing of a 15-year-old boy. At least 34 have been injured and 13 detained in street clashes. Protests erupted after Alexandros Grigoropoulos was shot in Athens' left-wing enclave of Exarchia after the boy allegedly tried to throw a firebomb at a patrol car. As soon as news of his death in a local hospital was confirmed, hundreds of youths in Exarchia began attacking police cars with stones and firebombs, burning dozens of cars and smashing shop windows. Police responded with tear gas, but the uprising quickly spread to Thessaloniki and the resort islands of Crete and Corfu. Tourist zones have been evacuated and streets closed to all traffic. (AlJazeera, Dec. 8)

Several thousand protesters took to the streets of Pristina, Kosova's capital, Dec. 2 to oppose the planned deployment of a European Union judicial mission that many Albanians fear will partition the country. The 2,000-strong mission would be deployed under a plan approved last week by the UN Security Council and accepted by Kosova's Prime Minister Hashim Thaci. Critics say the mission violates Kosova's sovereignty and fear that separate chains of command planned for Albanian and Serb police forces would entrench the country's partition along ethnic lines. (NYT, Dec. 3)