People in Duisburg, Germany, and across the world, are angry after police admitted to removing an Israeli flag that hanging in a student's window during a pro-Palestinian protest, Spiegel Online reported.
The western German city's police chief issued an apology for using force to storm the student's apartment Saturday to remove the flag because 10,000 demonstrators protesting the Gaza Strip invasion in the street below were angered by it.
The protest was organized by the Islamist group Milli Görüs, which has been monitored by German intelligence agencies for potentially radical behavior.
The student who hung the flag, whom the paper did not identify in order to protect him, likened the crowd's reaction to the Israeli symbol to that of a "lynch mob," Speigel reported.
Video of police officers tearing down the flags has been widely circulated on YouTube.
The student claims protesters threw things at his apartment for hours, and he was afraid to return home.
Duisburg chief of police, Rolf Cebin, publicly apologized for the incident.
"I deeply regret the fact that, especially, the feelings of Jewish people were hurt," he was quoted by Spiegel. "From the standpoint of the present, it was the wrong decision."
The state chapter of the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) plans to raise the issue during a meeting of the state domestic affairs committee on Thursday.
