All-Russia Fans Association to ask Sports Ministry, Foreign Ministry to help return fans convicted in France home - head
MOSCOW. June 23 (Interfax) - The All-Russia Fans Association will urge the Sports Ministry and Foreign Ministry to facilitate the return of the three Russian fans convicted in France on charges of involvement in riots in Marseilles, association head Alexander Shprygin said.
"What the All-Russia Fans Association is concerned about most of all is that three guys from our bus haven't returned home: these are Alexei Yerunov, Nikolai Morozov, and Sergei Gorbachev, who have been given one year, a year and a half, and two years of real jail time," Shprygin said at a press conference in Moscow on Thursday.
The fans convicted in France are maintaining regular contacts with Russian diplomats, have managed to talk with their families, and have had support for them expressed by their chosen football clubs, he said.
"The All-Russia Fans Association will turn to the Russian Sports Ministry and Foreign Ministry for help in returning our guys home, because, after all, this was a politicized story," Shprygin said.
Shprygin said French policemen in Marseille admitted in unofficial conversations that they were receiving instructions from Paris. In alleging that the French justice system acted selectively, Shprygin said a man of Arab appearance wielding a broken glass bottle and threatening British fans during the Marseilles riots was given a suspended sentence of three months in jail.
"Tula resident Sergei Gorbachev: all evidence incriminating him in court was his photograph, in which, as the prosecutor said, 'he is walking at a speed of six kilometers per hour, meaning he was hurrying somewhere, and had an aggressive intention, and here he leaned down, meaning he was preparing to attack someone, and so he had to be sentenced for a year and a half'," Shprygin said.
He claimed that the Russians serving their time at a Marseilles prison were held in unsatisfactory conditions and had already been robbed.
"After Euro 2016 ends and after the events somewhat settle down, we will ask the French side to revise [its decision] through an appeal procedure or allow their extradition home. We will address this story," Shprygin said.