New school closing due to Instagram riot fears

Fears of renewed violence have prompted a second Gothenburg school to remain closed on Wednesday, the day after police clashed with a mob of angry teens upset over a slanderous Instagram account outing young girls and boys as 'sluts'.

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"There are rumours that they'll be coming at us, but we have no idea why," Jörgen Frohm, principal of the Framtidsskola high school, told the TT news agency.

"I'm standing here with the police... it's pure stupidity and hooliganism. They want to maximize attention, but we're not taking any risks."

Frohm said there is no connection between his school and the Instagram account that prompted disturbances in Gothenburg on Tuesday, spreading from outside the Plusgymnasiet high school, which remained closed on Wednesday, to a nearby mall.

CLICK HERE FOR IMAGES FROM THE SCENE OF TUESDAY'S GOTHENBURG STUDENT RIOT

Paula Hammerskog, spokeswoman for Plusgymnasiet's owner Academedia told TT she hoped the school would reopen as soon as possible, but that staff there would follow the advice of police.

Hammerskog confirmed that the 17-year-old girl suspected of being behind the Instagram account is a student at the school, but underlined that the suspicions were based on rumours.

"She's getting the support she needs. We consider her innocent," she told TT.

The 17-year-old girl is being formally investigated for slander by the police after claims that she was behind an Instagram account filled with details of the alleged sexual activities and proclivities of local teens, some with racial overtones and many written with extremely offensive language.

The girl has denied, however, having anything to do with account that led students to riot in the city's streets on Tuesday, resulting in 27 arrests.

"I've been interrogated by the police. But I've been falsely accused. I haven't done this," the girl told the Expressen newspaper, claiming that others had set up the Instagram account.

She instead claimed she was set up by the real account owners when she threatened to report them to the police.

She herself had her picture posted among the roughly 200 images of boys and girls exposed on the Instagram account after its administrator asked for "tips on sluts in Gothenburg".

Meanwhile, a new version of the Instagram account appeared again on Tuesday night, featuring images with degrading and sexist comments.

Several other "copycat" accounts have appeared in other cities.

The Borås Tidning (BT) newspaper reports that young girls have filed a police report after an Instagram account appeared with pictures of several teenage girls in various states of undress.

The local Göteborgs-Posten (GP) newspaper reports that police have received more than 40 complaints of slander in the wake of the degrading posts on Instagram and Facebook, which include claims about their sex lives.

TT/The Local/dl
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