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More melees Soccer fans clash again before UEFA Cup final
Posted: Wednesday May 17, 2000 08:59 PM
COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) -- Riot police fired tear gas Wednesday to disperse rival English and Turkish fans as at least three people were reported stabbed in renewed clashes ahead of the UEFA Cup final between Galatasaray of Turkey and Arsenal. A Turkish man and two Britons had been stabbed Wednesday afternoon but their wounds were not life-threatening, police chief superintendent Mogins Lauridsen said, adding that there was possibly a fourth but it was not confirmed. "We had three or four injured by stabbing," Lauridsen said, adding that 10 people had been arrested, including one of the me who was stabbed. "As far as we know they are not in a dangerous condition." He said he could not confirm reports that a man from Amsterdam was stabbed. Fighting broke out in the late afternoon when hundreds of supporters of both teams started chasing each other around a downtown square, throwing bottles and uprooting tables and flagpoles before helmeted riot police arrived and fired tear gas. It was the same square where clashes had erupted in the early morning hours, resulting in the stabbing of 41-year-old Arsenal fan Paul Dineen of London. At least four others were seriously injured, including head injuries, a broken ankle and one person whose ear was partially severed, said Marianne Uldall Jepsen, spokeswoman for Copenhagen's hospital system. Details were sketchy but police cleared the square after more than hour of rioting. The English fans had moved back into the pubs on its perimeter and the Turkish fans also had moved out of the area as a heavy rain began. At least 24,000 Turkish and British fans flocked to Copenhagen to watch Galatasaray take on Arsenal Wednesday night. Galatasaray was trying to become the first Turkish club to win one of Europe's two major club championships. The game was classified as high risk by soccer officials, partly because of fears that British hooligans may attempt to avenge the killing of two English fans last month on the eve of Leeds' first-leg semifinal in Istanbul against Galatasaray. Lauridsen said the Turkish suspect who was stabbed had been treated at a hospital, then transferred to a police station. He could not offer more details, saying police had been taken by surprise by the seriousness of the clashes and were struggling to keep things under control. "We're trying to catch up but there's a lot going on," he said in an interview that was often interrupted as his mobile phone kept disconnecting. "We didn't expect that so much people wanted to fight with each other. Of course we were expecting a lot of trouble, but we weren't expecting it on this scale." It was not clear how the melee began during the late afternoon rush hour, but the private Turkish television station NTV reported that fans had been taunting each other, throwing chairs and other debris. Few police were on the square when the violence began but more arrived quickly and fired the tear gas. One man was seriously injured when he was attacked by a group of people wearing Galatasaray jerseys with a bloody chair from a cafe, the owner of a snackbar on the square said, refusing to give his name.
The injured man was carried away by an ambulance. Police were conducting Denmark's most extensive security operation ever in connection with a soccer match, with approximately 2,000 officers -- 20 percent of Denmark's total police force -- dispatched for the game. They were being assisted by some two dozen police from Britain, Turkey and other European countries. "I think we have the situation under control now but there's a lot of bad feelings between these supporters so everytime they meet something happens," Lauridsen said about an hour before the game was to begin. For much of Wednesday, fans from all sides had peacefully mingled in a sea of red and yellow Galatasaray jerseys and red and white Arsenal shirts and flags that filled the city's busy pedestrian street, Stroeget. But the upbeat atmosphere that appeared on the streets Tuesday when fans started to arrived seemed to have been dampened by Wednesday morning. Eight people were injured and four Britons and six Turks arrested in the early morning clashes. Three of the Britons arrested were not residents of Denmark and were being expelled from the country, police spokesman Flemming Steen Munch said. Arsenal offered to reimburse fans for the match and plane tickets if they were concerned about going to the Danish capital, but several pedestrians said they had declined the offer. In Ankara, Turkish Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit urged the soccer fans to avoid violence. "Sports should be an initiative for friendship, not for fighting," Ecevit said at a news conference. Dineen described pandemonium with bottles, glasses and bicycles being thrown as dozens of Turkish fans attacked a pub where English fans had been spending much of the evening. Many English fans retaliated by rushing out of the bars, and people were throwing things at each other and fighting in the melee that began about 1 a.m. Dineen, who remained hospitalized Wednesday afternoon, was surrounded by four fellow fans as he writhed on the ground in pain, his shirt drenched in blood. The supporters used their shirts to help stop the bleeding and tried to shield him from photographers. "I was in unbearable pain as my friends helped me, and I thought I was going to die," Dineen was quoted as saying by the British news agency Press Association. Dineen had left the hospital and was going to be taken to the game and given a dignitary's seat, an Arsenal spokesman told the British Press Association on condition that he not be identified.
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