British police get power to arrest at the World Cup

The Times Online
Apr. 01, 2006

UNIFORMED British police officers will have full powers of arrest during the World Cup. As Germany announced plans yesterday to transform the country into a virtual fortress during the tournament this summer, officials revealed that the 100 visiting British officers had been granted unprecedented powers to operate in a foreign country. “Under the terms of the German police law, European Union officers will have the authority to arrest,” August Hanning, the Deputy Interior Minister and a former head of the security service, said.

Lawyers from the Crown Prosecution Service will work alongside German courts.

British police will mainly be attached to federal German officers policing borders, railway stations, airports and trains. But some will be deployed in city centres with local police.

Senior police officers and counter-terrorism experts from the 32 countries participating in the World Cup met in Berlin yesterday to discuss the threat of hooliganism and terrorism.

The most important measure will be the suspension of the Schengen Agreement, which provides for open borders in much of mainland Europe. Travellers arriving from Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, Austria and France will be stopped at frontier posts.

About 5,000 German soldiers will be on standby. German air space is to be patrolled before and during matches and leave has been cancelled for tens of thousands of policemen. The 300,000 accredited journalists, guests and officials are being vetted. “We are trying to anticipate every possible weak spot in our security system,” Horst Schmidt, the vice-president of the organising committee, said. Herr Hanning acknowledged that Germany was still haunted by the terrorist attack at the 1972 Olympics. “The attacks in Munich, and later in America on September 11, 2001, are in the backs of everybody’s minds” he said.

The new combination of hooligan clashes and a terror alert was highlighted by Peter Murrman, the deputy mayor of Nuremberg, which will host England’s match with Trinidad. “It’s not the England fans we are worried about,” he said. “It’s the possibility of the Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad arriving to see Iran versus Japan.”

Tehran has not confirmed the visit, but Nuremberg would become a counter-terrorism priority as well as a destination for neo-Nazis, who have promised to demonstrate in sympathy with the Iranian President because he has questioned the authenticity of the Holocaust.

Assistant Chief Police Officer Stephen Thomas, the British police co-ordinator, was confident that everything would go smoothly. “The arrangements are first-class. Everything has been planned for,” he said.

But some areas of concern were highlighted, including Polish and Croatian hooliganism, neo-Nazi infiltration of World Cup volunteers, racism from the stands and the behaviour of non-ticket holders in public viewing areas.