Overnight violence related to anti-G20 demonstrations was carried out by “thugs and criminals, not protesters,” Germany’s interior minister said on Saturday (July 8).

Thomas de Maiziere told reporters in his hometown of Dresden that more than 200 police officers were injured during two nights of looting, arson attacks and “serious bodily harm.”

The interior minister added that according to security authorities, preparations for the violence had been underway for a year and a half and that the logistics then originated inside camps set up on the outskirts of Hamburg.

De Maiziere said authorities had tried to ban these camps but “courts decided differently” which “did not facilitate the police’s operation.”