More than 480 activists protesting against Nato were on Sunday detained outside the military alliance's headquarters in Brussels, the Belga news agency reported. Dubbed "Nato Game Over," the protest ahead of the alliance's May summit was supposed to include activists entering the headquarters and symbolically shutting it down. No one was able to do so, Belgian police told Belga.
They said those detained during the protest would be released in the evening. "This is an act of civil disobedience. We are committing a small offence to avoid a bigger one," Roel Stynen of the organisation Vredesactie told Belga.
He accused Nato Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen of wanting to turn the alliance into "a military intervention apparatus," pointing to its missions in Afghanistan and Libya. Activists also took issue with Nato's plan for a European missile shield, saying that it would "relaunch the global arms race."