Saturday, April 07, 2007

Tottenham Fans Attacked: Eyewitness Report #2

Again, this text is from a contributor to the message board on http://www.spursodyssey.com .

"I was in the lower tier.
Whilst I heard many stories about what happened, such as the fans queuing at the entrance to the ground being charged by mounted police and also the batoning of a disabled fan I will confine this email purely to the events that I actually saw with my own eyes.

Firstly let me categorically state that there were no problems between the home and away fans at all, despite the fact that the segregation consisted of a length of plastic tape. I didn’t expect there to be any problems between the fans as we had all been mingling together throughout the day both in the fanzone (which was a huge success) and in the streets and bars near the stadium. We were welcomed by the people of Seville and from what I saw Spurs fans were very well behaved.

Inside the stadium the conduct of the riot police was a disgrace. The trouble appeared to flare when one Spurs supporter walked down the aisle and was baton ed, seemingly for no reason. Other supporters were outraged at what had happened and said as much to the police - the result was the indiscriminate batoning of anyone within their range.
A young girl who was there with her Dad was struck on the head with a baton, when her Dad remonstrated with the policeman he was hit several times and as a result his head was pouring with blood. The sleeve of my jumper was soaked with blood and I thought that I had been cut, however I soon realised that it was not my blood but that of the father and daughter who had been attacked next to me.

Shortly after this a young Asian Spurs fan came towards me clearly in shock, he showed me his hand and his fingers looked to be broken as he had tried to defend a blow from a baton. He was shaking and very upset. I tried to comfort him but I realised that there was no point in him asking for medical attention from the same police who had attacked him moments before.

It’s true to say that not all Spurs fans are angels and yes seats and punches were thrown at the police, but I have no doubt at all that the problems were as a direct result of the disgraceful attacks from the police on innocent supporters. This is proven to an extent by the fact that there were no problems in the second half when the police had thankfully moved from their first half position.

Finally I must praise the Spurs stewards who were in attendance, they bravely tried to prevent Spurs fans from being attacked and defuse the situation. Their reward was the same as the Spurs fans they sought to protect – they were baton-ed by
the police."

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Just because you are a football fan doesn't mean you are fair game for an anonymous legal thug to bash you. Nothing will happen to these scum, they will eat with their families this Easter and pretend they are nice people. Next time they will enjoy it more because they will have looked forward to it. UEFA should shut down the stadium and declare it unsafe as they should if a stadium poses danger to the public.

Anonymous said...

We had it coming: this game should never happen during Holy Week. The Spaniards were very nervous about the English drunken behaviour and that explains why the police was told to beat first and ask later. To play football during a night of sacred mourning is unacceptable, but UEFA are idiots and then there you have it...

Anonymous said...

The man who should take responsibility for this whole mess is the lunatic that has called for "zero tolerance". This has given riot police across Europe carte blanche to beat the living daylights out of amongst others women, children and the disabled.

I was also at the game and have sent my eyewitness report to Spurs as I urge all those present to do.

The name of this beast I feel responsible for this week's mayhem?
Michel François Platini, the President of UEFA.

M. Platini, whether wittingly or not, has with his words unleashed the devil and if he has any honour should resign immediately.

Anonymous said...

just to add some of my own comments from being at the match. at the beginning there was a buffer zone seperating the two sets of fans, which was about 4 seats wide and a spurs steward told us afterwards that this was supposed to be occupied by spurs stewards. unfortunately some seville fans were supposed to being sitting in this zone, so the police simply got rid of the buffer and there was only a single line of tape seperating the two fans. the first baton was actually swung because a seville fan complained that a spurs fan spat at him. a policeman dealt with this not only by swinging hit baton but missing his target and hitting a woman in the face! if my girlfriend was hit unjustly in the face by anyone, be it civilian or policeman, i would react to that too