(17 May 2012) Around 200 demonstrators gathered outside Lithuania's presidential palace on Thursday to hold a vigil for a girl who was returned to her mother by riot police.
Police used a 5-month-old court order to help the mother regain custody of her 8-year-old daughter from a house where relatives were keeping her.
Many Lithuanians have violently opposed the court order because they allege the girl's mother, Laimute Stankunaite, is part of a paedophile ring.
The prime minister has defended the action, saying that people must respect the country's constitution and law enforcement practices.
One protester outside the presidential palace in downtown Vilnius taunted police, daring them to arrest him.
"I express my opinion in accordance with the constitution," said Andreij Lobov.
"I am a degenerate! I'm a devil, I'm crazy, I'm a moron!" he added, before biting the police tape.
The demonstrators were holding a candle-lit vigil outside the president's residence to urge her to reverse the court decision.
Meanwhile, at the house from where the girl was taken, in the southern town of Garliava some protesters were still gathered outside.
Earlier on Thursday, 39 protesters were detained as they tried to stop riot police from entering the house.
Protesters had long prevented authorities from taking the girl, Deimante Kedyte, from her deceased father's relatives by forming a cordon around the house.
But early on Thursday morning Stankunaite and her lawyer - both wearing bulletproof vests and surrounded by dozens of police carrying shields - whisked the girl out of the house to a waiting van.
The demonstrators screamed and shouted obscenities, and many were later shown crying.
It was a dramatic development in a tragic case that has riveted Lithuanian society for the past three years.
In 2009, the girl's father, Drasius Kedys, claimed his daughter was being abused by a paedophile ring involving Stankunaite.
After Kedys failed to get a court order protecting his daughter, he allegedly killed a judge and the mother's sister, both of whom he accused of being part of the paedophile ring.
Kedys then disappeared, only to be found dead near a reservoir in mysterious circumstances two years ago.
His funeral was attended by thousands of Lithuanians who had come to regard him as a martyr who dared fight a corrupt justice system.
On Thursday, the girl and her mother were moved to an undisclosed location under constant police protection.
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