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Lens still reeling from violence
Posted: Tuesday June 23, 1998 11:25 AM
Special form L'Equipe, the French sports daily PARIS (L'Equipe)
-- 200 yards from the Bollaert stadium, the small Romuald-Pruvost street is
stuck between a railway and a row of brick houses. There, on the sidewalk,
police officer Daniel Nivel fell, savagely attacked after the Germany-Yugoslavia
match. He was watching over his squad's bus when a group of Germany
hooligans jumped on him. A neighbor saw it all from his window. "At the
entrance of the street, there were 30 of them, mean-looking. Suddenly,
three or four of them ran to the bus, they had a board, with which they
violently hit the policeman behind the head. They went at him unrelentingly
when he was on the ground, with their feet." Doctor Goldstein, who's at
the head of Lille's emergency department, had some horrible things to add:
"Considering the state of his injuries, we think they took his helmet off
and that they went on hitting him in the head," he said. On Monday
morning, Lens was peaceful again, but its population was still in shock. At
the train station, nobody was paying much attention to four young Germans,
even though they had been arrested the day before along with 92 fellow
countrymen. Two of them even appeared on the news, kneeling on their knees,
handcuffed. Monday, they were waiting for a train to go back home. One
of them was limping, his German national team jersey stained with dust and
blood. They didn't speak French, but one of them had bought French
newspapers. Maybe in order to have a picture of himself, provoking the
police. Another one had cuts in his ear and above one of his eyes. Only
one of them, named Juergen, spoke English, and said he came from Hamburg
and worked in the administration. "I came to Lens without a ticket, and
without any hope of buying one. I didn't have any money anyway," he said.
"I just wanted to be here to have a good time. Just like my buddies, I had
nothing to do with those who attacked that policeman. The police let us go.
I only threw a chair. The guilty ones, the German police knows them well,
anyway. They had tattoos all over and their heads were shaved."
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German thugs have put a black mark on this World Cup (AP) |
Neo-Nazis? "What do you think?" Juergen answered. At the police
station, 15 hooligans were still in custody on Monday. An emergency
expulsion procedure was initiated for six of them. And the fan who
allegedly attacked the policeman, Markus Barnet, of Hanover, who's listed
as very dangerous, was still being interrogated before being taken to
court. Several witnesses identified him. "Concerning the rest of them, the
justice system will decide," the region's prefect, Daniel Cadoux,
explained. Cadoux went on saying he wasn't particularly worried about
Friday's England-Colombia
match. "Sunday, our system worked perfectly and it will work perfectly
Friday. We don't necessarily need reinforcements," he said. Yet Lens is
getting ready for a siege. Many shopkeepers, especially the cafés close to
the stadium, are thinking about closing. It will be decided in a meeting of
their local association if they should all do so. "It's better to have a
dead town for a day than a destroyed town," one of them, who also is a fan
of the local soccer team, said. This French fan had two tickets to
Friday's match in his pocket, but he said he wouldn't use, or even sell
them. "In Lens, thanks to our team, soccer is a celebration. I really
looked forward to taking my son see England play. But I'm disgusted. The
kid is going to be disappointed, but I think Friday I'll take the whole
family to the beach," he said. All the while, in Lille's hospital,
policeman David Nivel, who's 43 and has two kids, was struggling, in a
coma, suffering from serious, multiple head injuries. His doctors were
fearing the worst, and Professor Dhellemmes added that "we only saw blows
to the head, which goes to show how deliberate this aggression was."
Copyright 1998, L'Equipe
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