White nationalist Richard Spencer’s unsuccessful attempt to enter Europe was stopped in Iceland last week.
Border officials Fréttablaðið spoke with contend he was not arrested, despite Spencer’s claims that he was detained for about three hours.
Sigurgeir Sigmundsson, the deputy chief of police for the airport division of the Suðurnes police, told reporters that Spencer was stopped at Keflavík International Airport — not in Reykjavík, as has been reported — on his way to Sweden, and sent packing back to the US.
“This is a rather ordinary registration in the Schengen Area system,” Sigurgeir said. “He was at one point kicked out of Poland and banned from returning there, and this registration applies to the entire Schengen area. It’s just a natural part of the Schengen Agreement that if you’re deported from one [Schengen] country, that applies to all of them. So when he landed here and intended to travel on to Europe, it didn’t work.”
Spencer has told reporters since that he was detained for roughly three hours, but Sigurgeir says Spencer was not put under arrest.
“He was stopped and not allowed across the border,” Sigurgeir said. “He wasn’t arrested but kept in this area of the airport known as the Non-Schengen Area, the departure area for the US and the UK. Then he took a plane to the US the same day, back to where he came.”
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