'Anarchist' Briton hurt in riot

A British anti-capitalist activist was badly hurt as riot police clashed with demonstrators during the anti-G8 summit protests in Switzerland.

As the previously peaceful protests became violent, riot police with tear gas canisters and truncheons fought to clear blocked streets and prevent looting in the Swiss cities of Geneva and Lausanne.

As many as 100,000 activists demonstrated against the meeting of the world's leading industrialised nations, held across the border in the French spa town of Evian.

Martin Shaw, 39, suffered multiple fractures after falling 60 feet from a bridge over a river in Lausanne into shallow water. Swiss police admitted that one of their officers cut the rope, which was blocking a road, not realising anybody was hanging from it.

Police have launched an official investigation into yesterday's incident.

Mr Shaw, from Ealing, had been among a group of about 15 activists trying to suspend a banner from the bridge with the slogan "G8 illegal".

Mr Shaw is an experienced activist who has used his mountain-climbing skills in anti-capitalist protests across the world. He has been arrested on several occasions, the first time in 1998.

The self-confessed anarchist left school at 16 and went to technical college in High Wycombe before qualifying as an electrician.

But soon after qualifying, he took a year out to go travelling and started a degree in ecology and computing at Manchester University on his return. "At college I got a broader view of life and decided to become an anarchist," he said in 2000. He became involved in a series of radical groups as a full-time activist.

The French and Swiss authorities are maintaining a 10-mile exclusion zone around Evian to prevent protesters getting too close to the delegates and politicians.

There has been a series of violent confrontations between the police and demonstrators, who claim the summit will do little to address the needs of the world's poor.