Hanover, May 21 :

Angola arrived in Hanover airport in Germany on Saturday with threats by neo-Nazis of holding a march on the day of one of their matches at the finals.

As the debutant west Africans became the third participating nation, after Togo and Costa Rica, to set up camp ahead of the June 9-July 9 football showpiece, magazine Der Spiegel broke the news about a planned anti-semitic neo-Nazi rally. They are apparently planning on holding a protest in Leipzig, in the former East Germany, on June 21 where Angola will be playing Iran.

“The neo-Nazis want to use the World Cup to attract the eyes of the world on themselves,” wrote the magazine. “On the internet they are calling to descend on Leipzig on June 21 where they intend on demonstrating their support for the Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who has denied the Holocaust and refuses to accept the right of Israel to exist.”

President of the German police Konrad Freiberg told Der Spiegel that such a protest could cause a “state of emergency for the police,” as they “would not be able to ensure the safety of such protests during the World Cup.”