Czech police step in at Czechtek

Czech police have intervened at an allegedly illegal music festival - known as Czechtek - held annually in the Czech Republic. Early Saturday the festival, held on a meadow near the village of Mlynec na Tachovsku, in west Bohemia, continued with some 5,000 visitors. But, police - numbering more than a thousand in riot gear and backed, for example, by water cannons - intervened Saturday afternoon, trying to force visitors off the grounds. Part of a nearby highway was closed off. Several hundred visitors reportedly refused to back down and began throwing bottles, at which point police resorted to using tear gas.

The police intervention followed charges pressed by neighbouring landowners who complained that visiting fans had clogged local roads and had damaged private property.

Police intervened only following an assessment by a public prosecutor and an authorised expert saying that festival-goers had broken the law. But, the owner of the grounds has complained he rented the site to festival organisers legally.

In the past, Czechtek has courted no small measure of controversy: last year the event, held elsewhere in Bohemia, resulted in property damages of an estimated 1.4 million crowns - the equivalent of about 56,000 dollars US. At that time police also stepped in.