Hundreds of German police in full riot gear stopped a train carrying Hungarian football supporters to a match in Germany and conducted extensive and invasive searches.
The fans had left Budapest on Wednesday evening and were on their way to the Bayer Leverkusen-Ferencváros Europa League match.
“They ransacked our bags. We didn’t show our bags to them, but they started rummaging through them, and then we had to take off our hats, coats, sweaters; that’s how they searched us,” said a fan that spoke with Hungarian news portal Mandiner. “We were humiliated, that’s what the charade was about.”
The fan said there were hundreds of German police were waiting for them at the Czech-German border when the train arrived.
“They looked like stormtroopers in Star Wars,” he said.
When the special train arrived at the station, the officers swarmed the train almost immediately and then unloaded the Ferencváros fans one by one from the wagons.
“We couldn’t go on until all the cars had been searched, all the supporters had been searched,” he continued. “There were so many police, by the way, that they stretched from the beginning to the end of train, but of the hundreds of police, only a few dozen were actually doing anything.”
The Hungarian fan said that one of the things the police took from him was a Swiss army knife, which was resting in his bag, folded up. He told the police that he had no intention of taking the instrument into the stadium — which he would not have been permitted to do in any event, as the stadium’s security procedure is so strict. Still, the uniformed officers escorted him to a separate tent, which was set up by the authorities well before the train arrived. There, a record of the “incident” was taken, according to the Hungarian fan.
Several supporters were allowed back on the train, although a definite number is not known, he also said.
“After over two hours of search, the train was eventually allowed to leave,” the FradiMob fan page said.
According to German regional news portal MDR, federal police confiscated pyrotechnics, face masks, knives, and drugs from the fans.
Bayer Leverkusen won the home match 2-0.
