France Arrests More Than 300 in Euro Soccer Tournament’s First Week

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/17/world/europe/arrests-soccer-euro-2016-france.html

Version 0 of 1.

PARIS — More than 300 people have been arrested in France since the Euro 2016 soccer tournament began last week, and 24 are being deported after violent clashes between fans, the French authorities said Thursday. The violence has marred the start of the event and heightened security concerns in a country that is still under high alert for terrorist threats.

Bernard Cazeneuve, the French interior minister, said in a statement on Thursday that 323 people had been arrested in connection with instances of violence, theft and vandalism since the tournament began on June 10, and that 196 of them had been temporarily detained.

Eight of those detained have already appeared in court and were sentenced to prison, Mr. Cazeneuve said, and three received suspended prison sentences.

On Thursday, three other men, all Russian citizens, were sentenced to one to two years in prison and barred from returning to France for two years after their release for their role in violent clashes in the southern port city of Marseille.

French law gives prosecutors the ability to put people on trial immediately after their temporary detention ends, but only for some offenses, not serious crimes, and only when the facts of the case are clearly established, like when offenders are caught in the act, for instance.

Twenty-four people are being deported from France in connection with violence during the Euro tournament, Mr. Cazeneuve said.

Twenty of them are Russian men, 25 to 40 years old, who clashed with English soccer fans and the French police in Marseille on June 11, said Stéphane Bouillon, the regional prefect.

UEFA, the body that oversees European soccer, has already fined the Russian soccer federation and warned that the Russian team could be disqualified from the tournament if similar incidents continued inside stadiums.

Supporters’ use of flares in stadiums and the repeated presence of fans on the field have prompted security concerns.

The Russian men, who are being detained, were arrested in Mandelieu, a city in the Alpes-Maritimes administrative department that is about 100 miles east of Marseille, Mr. Bouillon said. They are expected to leave French territory on Monday.

New incidents involving soccer fans and the police have occurred this week, although none have reached the levels of chaos and violence in Marseille.

In Lille, where the authorities worried that English and Russian supporters would clash again on Wednesday during Russia’s game against Slovakia, the local prefecture said in a statement that there had been “limited scuffles provoked mostly by drunken British nationals.”

The police used tear gas to disperse the fans, the prefecture said, even though there were no brawls between English and Russian citizens or between supporters of the teams and the police; no one was severely hurt. The police arrested 37 people and put 15 of them in temporary custody, the statement said.

In Lyon, a Frenchman and a Belgian were lightly wounded by unidentified assailants wielding sharp objects in a fan-zone where supporters had gathered to watch France play Albania.

The assailants are thought to be Albanian supporters, but no arrests have been made, and the weapons used to wound the two men were not found, according to local authorities.

The Euro soccer tournament, which runs until July 10, has magnified worries about security in France, which is still under the state of emergency that was declared after the Nov. 13 attacks that killed 130 people in and near Paris.

The killings of a police officer and his companion near Paris on Monday, by a man who said he acted in the name of the Islamic State, have compounded those fears.

The man, identified as Larossi Abballa, 25, was killed by an elite police unit. He warned in an online video beforehand that “the Euro will be a cemetery,” referring to the soccer tournament, although it was unclear whether Mr. Abballa had specific knowledge of a plot.

France eased its gun rules in response to the attack, announcing on Wednesday that it would allow off-duty police officers to carry their sidearms even after the state of emergency comes to an end in late July.