vThe trial against seven teenagers and young men who are said to have been involved in the serious New Year's Eve riots in the Bonn district of Medinghoven in 2022 began on Tuesday in the Bonn regional court. The public prosecutor's office accuses the group – two eighteen-year-olds, a 34-year-old man and four adolescents – of breach of the peace, physical attacks, resistance to emergency services and attempted grievous bodily harm.
According to the indictment, at the end of 2022 a group of around 20 people agreed to violently riot against the police via messenger service. The aim was to lure emergency services into an ambush and attack them.
According to the investigators' findings, the group used the French feature film “Athena”, released in September 2022, as a template. The film is about a 13-year-old boy of Algerian descent dying after allegedly severe police violence and a group of young people then stealing weapons and a patrol car from a police station, barricading themselves in the “Athena” high-rise development and shooting fireworks at arriving special forces.
According to the Bonn public prosecutor's office, the seven now accused teenagers and young men, wearing balaclavas, are said to have built barricades made of garbage containers and bins in the Medinghoven district around midnight on December 31, 2022 and set them on fire. Arriving fire and police forces are said to have targeted the group with firecrackers, rockets, stones and crates of drinks.
The operation had to be canceled initially. It was only an hour later that the tumult could be ended and the fires extinguished.
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