Search: student protest police probe
A university student suspected of throwing a fire extinguisher at police during the Millbank riot has been arrested.
The 23-year-old man, a student at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge, was held by officers on suspicion of violent disorder.
Police said the man, who is originally from Reading, was being questioned at Parkside police station in Cambridge.
The suspect was identified as teams of officers scoured footage recorded as protesters stormed the building housing the Tory party headquarters on Wednesday.
Police Federation representatives have called for the person who flung the empty metal fire extinguisher to be charged with attempted murder. Senior officers said it narrowly missed injuring two territorial support group officers, brushing down the back of one and hitting the knees of another.
The incident was one of the defining moments of the four-hour stand-off after a breakaway group of students attacked the Millbank office complex, with up to 50 demonstrators smashed windows, discharged fire extinguishers and threw debris from the roof of the building. The Met said that 10 of the 54 people arrested during sprawling outbreaks of disorder were aged under 18. A spokesman said most of the others were students, most aged between 18 and 26, and including 33 men and 21 women.
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Some student activists began fighting a rearguard action amid widespread condemnation of the violence and fears of further trouble on November 24 when it is believed that ministers will vote on the tuition fee rise in the Commons.
Clare Solomon, president of the University of London Union, claimed protesters were "goaded and provoked" by police. She said: "I do not condone the violence towards people that perhaps might have happened on the day. But she added: "When people were peacefully protesting, the police were hitting them with batons, and I have evidence of this. There were also people on the balconies, making hand gestures, rude hand gestures, shouting at them, jeering at them and I can understand why students felt totally provoked by this."
Meanwhile senior officials at the National Union of Students (NUS) wrote to staff at the Millbank Tower complex expressing "deep regret".
And Tory peer Lord Tebbit hit out at the Goldsmiths, University of London lecturers who described the demonstration as "magnificent", saying: "I can imagine what they would say were a group from the TaxPayers' Alliance to turn up at their homes and vandalise them in protest at the way these lecturers are leeching the taxpayer and failing to discipline their students."
