The 2020 Stuttgart riot took place during the night of 21 June 2020 when hundreds fought street battles with police in

Stuttgart Stuttgart (; Swabian: ; ) is the capital and largest city of the German state of Baden-Württemberg. It is located on the Neckar river in a fertile valley known as the ''Stuttgarter Kessel'' (Stuttgart Cauldron) and lies an hour from the ...

, the capital of

Baden-Württemberg Baden-Württemberg (; ), commonly shortened to BW or BaWü, is a German state () in Southwest Germany, east of the Rhine, which forms the southern part of Germany's western border with France. With more than 11.07 million inhabitants across a ...

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

. During the riots numerous shops were looted. On 20 June at 23:30, police investigated a 17-year-old in Schlossgarten for drug offences, whereupon about 200-500 sided with the accused and started to throw rocks and bottles at the police officers. The rioters screamed "Fuck the Police" and "Allahu Akbar" in videos recorded. Some rioters had prepared by wearing balaclavas while looting shops. The police apprehended 24 suspects. The riot generated media coverage nationally internationally. In the following weeks, police increased their presence in the city during weekends. Three weeks later, there was further rioting where eleven people were apprehended.

Police response

Two hundred police out of the surrounding area were called to the state capital. About a dozen police were wounded in the fighting and a number of police vehicles were destroyed.

Suspects

During the night, 24 suspects were apprehended, of which 14 were less than 21 years old and 7 were under 18. Half the apprehended were German citizens, of which 3 had a migration background (German: Migrationshintergrund) meaning their parents were not German citizens. The others originated from a number of countries:

Somalia Somalia, , Osmanya script: 𐒈𐒝𐒑𐒛𐒐𐒘𐒕𐒖; ar, الصومال, aṣ-Ṣūmāl officially the Federal Republic of SomaliaThe ''Federal Republic of Somalia'' is the country's name per Article 1 of thProvisional Constituti ...

Bosnia Bosnia and Herzegovina ( sh, / , ), abbreviated BiH () or B&H, sometimes called Bosnia–Herzegovina and often known informally as Bosnia, is a country at the crossroads of south and southeast Europe, located in the Balkans. Bosnia and He ...

and

Afghanistan Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,; prs, امارت اسلامی افغانستان is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. Referred to as the Heart of Asia, it is bordere ...

. 14 July police apprehended two further people suspected in having taken part in the violence and plunder. At the beginning of November, 100 suspects were identified. 83 of these 100 suspects have a migration background. Several of the suspects were

refugee A refugee, conventionally speaking, is a displaced person who has crossed national borders and who cannot or is unwilling to return home due to well-founded fear of persecution.

Criminal investigation

According to police,

extreme left Far-left politics, also known as the radical left or the extreme left, are politics further to the left on the left–right political spectrum than the standard political left. The term does not have a single definition. Some scholars consider ...

activists obstructed the investigations by the police, who had asked the public for video recordings during the riots. The activists responded by flooding the police website with 7500 videos, unrelated to the Stuttgart riot, totalling more than 100GB to the police website to overload. The videos did not overload the police server but would waste police time as they had to be investigated. The German police have made a number of suspect identifications using

super recogniser "Super recogniser" is a term coined in 2009 by Harvard and University College London researchers for people with significantly better-than-average face recognition ability. Super recognisers are able to memorise and recall thousands of faces, ofte ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Stuttgart riot, 2020 2020 crimes in Germany 2020s in Baden-Württemberg 2020 riot Attacks on buildings and structures in 2020 Attacks on buildings and structures in Germany Attacks on restaurants in Europe Attacks on shops in Europe Crime in Baden-Württemberg June 2020 crimes in Europe June 2020 events in Germany Riots and civil disorder in Germany