A UNIVERSITY of York student who took part in a protest march in Copenhagen said “it was just luck” she had not been arrested.

Jennie Dodson, of Fishergate, York, said four marchers she was with were arrested, but claimed they had done anything wrong.

The 27-year-old, one of tens of thousands of people who participated in the event in Denmark’s capital city on December 12, said the four were later released without charge. She said about 900 other demonstrators were also arrested.

The procession was held during the Copenhagen climate change conference 2009 in a bid to encourage conference delegates to thrash out a binding deal to tackle climate change. It was a “totally legal, peaceful march”, Jennie said.

She said: “I was extremely surprised that in a democratic European country the police were being very aggressive and threatening entirely peaceful people who were just there to have their voices heard.

“It was just luck – totally luck – that I didn’t get arrested.” Miss Dodson, who is doing a PhD in chemistry, said around 100,000 people joined the demonstration. “We started marching through the streets of Copenhagen, over the bridges,” she said. “There was lots of music and lots of dancing. It was a really, really good atmosphere.”

She said it was at around 2pm when events took a turn for the worse. “As we walked down towards the shopping streets it was a really good atmosphere, really peaceful, and suddenly there were some sounds from one of the side streets.

“Lots of riot police just came running out to the street from the side street and behind them came a line of riot vans and riot cops with Alsatian dogs barking at us. They stood really aggressively in front of us. And we were all very surprised. There was a real sense of ‘what’s going on here’. Then we tried to talk to the police and ask them what was going on and they refused to tell us why we’d been stopped.” She said four of the people she was with were arrested. “They were kept on buses or they were taken to detention centres and kept,” she said. She said they were released without charge at about 11pm that night.

National media reports said the march was mainly peaceful, but a group of protesters had thrown bricks at police. Danish police said they had made the arrests because of stone-throwing.

A spokesman said activists had worn face masks, and that was illegal in Denmark.