(Photo : FREDRIK SANDBERG/TT NEWS AGENCY/AFP via Getty Images)
Climate activist Greta Thunberg, seen getting carried away by police after a sit-in outside the Swedish parliament in Stockholm on March 13, 2024, was arrested twice while protesting Dutch fossil fuel subsidies at The Hague in the Netherlands on April 6, 2024.
High-profile Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg was arrested during a mass demonstration near the The Hague on Saturday and quickly released — only to rejoin the protest and get busted again.
Thunberg, 21, and hundreds of supporters of the Extinction Rebellion group tried to block the A12 highway that leads to seat of government and the International Court of Justice in the Netherlands, Reuters reported.
Dozens of cops, including officers on horseback, were on hand and arrested Thunberg and others, according to Germany's Deutsche Welle public broadcaster.
Thunberg was held for a short time and released — at which point she joined a small group that was blocking a different road to the local train station, Reuters said.
She was arrested again but instead of being freed, Thunberg was driven off in a police van.
Thunberg was held for several hours and released in the evening, an Extinction Rebellion spokesperson told Reuters.
A total of 412 people were detained, mostly for participating in a banned protest, local police said on X, formerly Twitter.
Officials wouldn't discuss any specific cases but said everyone who tried to block roads was arrested, Reuters said.
Saturday's protest was the latest in a series of more than 30 demonstrations against Dutch subsidies for the fossil fuel industry, which lawmakers are set to debate in June, according to DW.
Before being arrested, Thunberg told reporters that climate change posed an existential crisis for humanity.
"We are in a planetary emergency and we are not going to stand by and let people lose their lives and livelihood and be forced to become climate refugees when we can do something," she said.
When asked whether she was worried about getting arrested, Thunberg, who as a teen began staging weekly protests outside the Swedish parliament, answered, "Why should I be?"
Thunberg has been repeatedly fined in both Sweden and the U.K., where she was cleared in February of violating the Public Order Act during a demonstration at an oil and gas conference in London last year.
