UK police on Wednesday, October 18, charged Swedish climate campaigner Greta Thunberg with a public order offense, following her detention at a protest outside an annual gathering of energy industry figures in London.
The 20-year-old activist – a key face of the movement to fight climate change – was among 26 people charged by the capital's Metropolitan Police, after she was held at Tuesday's demonstration.
Thunberg was charged with "failing to comply with a condition" imposed under Britain's Public Order Act dealing with public assemblies. She was released on bail and is due back in court on November 15. Thunberg was on Tuesday taken away by two police officers and put into the back of a police van outside the Energy Intelligence Forum, after she had joined a mass protest there.
Several hundred protesters had gathered outside the InterContinental London Park Lane hotel during the "Oily Money Out" demonstration, organized by pressure groups Fossil Free London and Greenpeace, blocking all entrances to the venue. Prior to her arrest, Thunberg had criticized "closed-door" agreements struck between politicians and representatives of the oil and gas industry.
London police said they imposed "conditions to prevent disruption to the public" after officers arrived at the protest, which were then breached and prompted the arrests.
Thunberg, who started the "School Strike for Climate" movement as a teenager, was fined by a court in Sweden earlier this month. It followed the court convicting her for having resisted arrest during a July protest that blocked traffic.
Climate protesters, meanwhile, on Wednesday staged a demonstration outside the offices of Total Energies UK in London. Britain last month authorized oil and gas production in the Rosebank field in the North Sea off the coast of Scotland. Norwegian oil and gas producer Equinor and Ithaca Energy, a subsidiary of Israeli group Delek, will together invest $3.8 billion in developing the Rosebank field.