Five people to face prosecution after Gilets Jaunes demonstration

The Brussels Public Prosecutor’s Office said late on Monday morning that five of the 350 people arrested during Sunday’s gilets jaunes protest near Brussels’ Gare du Nord will face prosecution.

“Five people will face prosecution, three for possession of illegal weapons, one for resisting arrest and one for reasons that will shortly be disclosed,” said Denis Goeman, spokesman for the Brussels Public Prosecutor’s Office, on Monday.

A call to demonstrate on Sunday was circulated on social networks, as voters in 21 European Union Member States voted in the European elections. A few hundred gilets jaunes answered the call, but as the organisers had not asked for permission to protest, the police intervened to contain the rally in Simon Bolivar Square, outside the Gare du Nord in Brussels.

Dozens of police officers surrounded the demonstrators before arresting them one by one, without encountering much resistance. However, a group of demonstrators gathered outside the police cordon and headed towards the pedestrian path off the Square, vandalising street signs and bins as they went. The group then dispersed into the streets around the Grand-Place, where some of the gilets jaunes hid in a watch store, where the police eventually found them.