256_94 interference 94. Thus, for instance in the aforementioned case of Osmani and Others, the applicant, the mayor of a town, stated in a speech made during a public assembly his refusal to remove an Albanian flag, in defiance of a decision of the Constitutional Court. That speech triggered a fight between those citizens who wanted to remove the flag and those who wanted to keep it. After that incident, that applicant organised an armed vigil to protect the Albanian flag. The police later found weapons in the town hall and in the applicant’s flat. On the same day as they found the cache of weapons, the police were attacked by a group of about 200 people, who were armed with metal sticks and threw stones, rocks, Molotov cocktails and teargas projectiles at them. The Court found that in the very sensitive interethnic situation of that time the applicant’s speeches and actions had encouraged interethnic violence and violence against the police. Nonetheless, noting that the applicant was found guilty of stirring up national, racial and religious hatred, disagreement and intolerance, on account of the fact that he had organised a public meeting, the Court rejected the Government argument that Article 11 of the Convention was not applicable in that case. The Court considered that there had been an interference with the exercise of the applicant’s freedom of peaceful assembly. It then examined the necessity and the proportionality of the sanction imposed on the applicant and concluded that the applicant’s complaint under Article 11 was manifestly ill-founded.GÜLCÜ v. TURKEY JUDGMENT 37