SABOTAGE BUST AT PREZ'S SWEDEN STOP By KATE SHEEHY
June 13, 2001 -- Five militant activists have been busted for plotting "serious" sabotage in the Swedish city where President Bush is headed later this week.
Authorities called the plot "very, very serious" and possibly linked to the European Union summit that Bush is expected to attend in Gothenburg.
Swedish officials believe the saboteurs had an "anti-globalization" agenda like Seattle protesters in 1999.
"We also found some material that we are looking into now that we suspect could be used for some kind of sabotage," a local police spokesman said, according to ABCNEWS.com. He did not elaborate.
The suspects were described only as "young people born in the 1970s" who were militant leftists. Swedish authorities said they had been under surveillance for a while.
Details about the alleged sabotage plot were not immediately clear.
But U.S. officials insisted world globalization, not Bush, was the saboteurs' target.
Rabid anti-globalization activists have stepped up their protest efforts in recent years against groups such as the World Trade Organization, International Monetary Fund and World Bank.
Their numbers are so great - and organized - that hundreds have even reportedly been receiving special instruction on how to create anarchy when attending "direct action" camps in the United States.
Intelligence sources say the camps, based in Berkeley, Calif., charge "students" $125 to learn organized anarchy.
Instruction includes teaching them to form human chains to block roads, disable security cameras and pose as network cameramen.