German police were at the centre of comic scenes at a climate change protest close to a coal mine near the village of Lützerath in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia.
Officers in riot police gear managed to get themselves stuck in the mud and were taunted by protestors, including one man in what appeared to be a monk’s habit.
The druidic demonstrator mocked one officer, whose foot was deeply enmeshed in the mud, as his colleagues tried to pull him free.
Despite his best efforts to reach his tormentor, the officer, one of at least two to become stuck and several to tumble into the dirt, was stuck fast and couldn’t move.
After one cop became exasperated with his hooded nemesis and threw away his placard, the protestor, dubbed a “mud wizard” by one user on Twitter, pushed him over to cheers from the watching protest.
Video footage of the humiliation was posted on social media and showed the officers' attempts at escape being further hampered by being struck by hunks of mud thrown by the watching eco-protestors.
6,000 protestors, including environmental activist Greta Thunberg, gathered to demonstrate against the expansion of the coal mine, which threatens to destroy Lützerath.
Speaking at the edge of the protests in the village of Lüzerath in the Rhine region, Ms Thunberg accused the German Green party of hypocrisy, saying "they took part in the demonstrations to save Lützerath and then sacrificed Lüzerath”.
“We can’t accept that RWE, a fossil fuel company, can do deals with the government and threaten countless lives across the world,” Ms Thunberg told broadcaster ARD.
Ms Thunberg, 20, travelled to Germany last week to join protesters who had occupied the deserted village, which is situated at the edge of a huge open cast mine owned by energy firm RWE.
On Sunday, police carried Thunberg away after she refused to leave a sit-in at the edge of the mine.
German police spent much of last week clearing hundreds of protesters from the village, but two activists who had shut themselves inside an improvised tunnel were still holding out on Monday morning.
Germany’s energy minister, Robert Habeck of the Greens, announced the deal with RWE last autumn, describing it as a “milestone” for climate protection.
RWE agreed to waive its right to dig up coal under five further villages in the surrounding countryside and to stop all coal mining in the Rhine region in 2030, eight years earlier than planned.
The deal also saw RWE agree to keep two large coal-fired plants running for an extra 15 months to temper the effects of Russia cutting gas supplies to Germany.
This week Mr Habeck accused protesters of picking “the wrong symbol” in Lüzerath, claiming that the village stood for the end of coal mining in the region.
But climate activists have seethed at the fact that the environmentalist party have prioritised securing energy supplies over what they say see as the more critical fight against climate change.
Protesters point to studies that suggest that Germany will overshoot its climate obligations under the Paris protocols if it continues to mine the coal found in the Rhine region.
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