The Climate Justice Action’s German spokesman Tadzio Müller has been arrested immediately after holding a news conference at the COP15 Climate Summit venue at the Bella Center.

“We came out 45 minutes ago after having taken part in a news conference. I saw two officers who went up to him, arrested him and took him away. We don’t know why. We have not been given an explanation,” says another CJA spokesperson Mel Evans.

Copenhagen police have confirmed the arrest but declined to give a reason.

Remand hearing
“We are charging him under §119 and §134 which involve violence against police and inciting unrest in the city,” says Police Spokesman Svend Foldager adding that Müller will be presented in a custody hearing on Wednesday morning.

“14 days is what will probably be asked for, that is what the others have received but that is something that the lawyers will decide tomorrow at what will probably be a closed-door hearing,” Foldager says but declines to comment on whether the arrest had to do with statements made by Müller to the national Danish news agency Ritzau at the Bella Center.

Breaking the rules
Müller is reported to have divulged some of the plans for tomorrow’s large demonstration.

Part of the plan, according to Tadzio Müller, is to break into the Bella Center area. On the one hand, the demonstration is tabled as non-violent, but on the other, Müller told Ritzau, demonstrators would not allow themselves to be stopped by fences or other physical barriers.

“People have to break the rules,” Müller is reported as saying.

Disgrace
Whether it is these comments that have led to his arrest is not clear, but in a press release, the police say that Müller is seen as an organiser of tomorrow’s demonstration.

“It is an attempt to douse any form of criticism and get the climate debate critics to shut up,” Mel Evans says adding: “It’s a disgrace for democracy. The man was accredited to the Bella Center and part of the democratic debate.”