ISTANBUL, June 20 (Reuters) - Turkey's Court of Appeals on Friday overturned a young man's 15-year jail sentence for the killing of two English soccer fans and ordered a retrial to take into account "severe provocation". An Istanbul court in May last year jailed Ali Umit Demir for 15 years for killing Christopher Loftus and Kevin Speight, fans of English side Leeds United, in the city during street brawling before a UEFA Cup match in April 2000. Demir's defence lawyers had argued during the trial that the Leeds fans had been drunk and had insulted the Turkish flag. England are due to travel to Turkey in October for a 2004 European championship qualifier which will probably decide Group Seven. English football authorities, plagued by hooliganism problems of their own, have not taken up their ticket allocation to limit the number of fans travelling to Turkey. The killings in Istanbul helped spark tension between English and Turkish fans, who clashed on the streets of Copenhagen the same year at the UEFA Cup final between Arsenal and Galatasaray. European football body UEFA fined England a record 150,000 Swiss francs ($110,600) last month for racist abuse and crowd trouble at a European championship qualifier against Turkey in Sunderland, England in April. Turkey are under investigation over the throwing of bottles at Macedonian players at a qualifier in Istanbul this month. PROVOCATION Loftus and Speight died after running street battles broke out between Leeds fans and young men in central Istanbul the night before the match. The Ankara appeals court upheld three-month sentences on four other Turkish men involved in the fighting but overturned Demir's sentence, finding serious shortcomings in the prosecution evidence, the state-run Anatolian news agency said. In the original verdict, the three-judge panel agreed unanimously that Demir had murdered Speight but voted 2-1 that he had murdered Loftus. The appeals court ruled that more forensic work should have been done to establish that a knife taken from Demir was the murder weapon. It said the original verdict had not taken into account the level of provocation. It said the verdict should have been reduced because of "severe provocation". Turkish soccer authorities have not decided where the match against England will be played, although Fenerbahce's ground in Istanbul is a strong candidate.
I still do not understand why the Turks have never had their club teams banned from international competition, yet England has? I know for England it stemmed from Heysel, but it seems that the Turks are increasingly more violent. For example, the treatment of Irish players in the Euro 2000 playoffs by Turkish fans and players, and it was the Irish players defending themselves who were fined and suspended. The US team had missles and other objects thrown at them from the Turkish fans yesterday. When will UEFA and FIFA open their eyes and do something to stop the increasingly violent nature of the Turkish fans. I had thought that both organizations had learned something from Heysel. I guess not.
Not really a suprise is it eh?? backward medievel twats. Tourists should boycott places like turdkey...
It's because the vice President or whatever is........Turkish. Oh, and that all violence at crowds is the fault of English fans, whether its an Italian domestic game, or a Germany vs. Russia match.
Very, very bad move on their part if that joker gets off. All that will do is add fuel to the louts, who don't need any encouragement as it is, to get even more violent with the Turks when they next meet. There has to be more to this than is being reported.
Hey Doc, I did not know that the Dutch, Germans and Italians needed English supporters for their league games? All kidding aside, two Leeds supporters were viciously attacked and killed. Provoked? ************************! The Turks seem to be able to provoke all they want but when it gets thrown back at them, start slashing at everything English in sight. Why doesn't the courtroom look at the fact that the Englishmen this bastard murdered were unarmed? Provocation is grounds for acceptable homicide? I guess in Turkey it is.
if uefa doesnt have the balls to force the england turkey game to be played behind closed doors i will be severely pissed off. if you think the last two examples of their behavior were bad, which included a player being knocked in the head with a bottle, wait until you see how they will treat england. its ok though im sure the game will go on as normal because there is the way of dealing with england fans, and then the way they deal with everyone else. hypocrits (which i will take back if they force the game to be played in empty stadium)
Hilarious. "I'd rather be a Mexican than a Turk." Almost as hilarious as that "I'd rather be a Paki than a Turk" chant. It's good we have such funny moderators!
Correction: The Rats and Idiots of Europe! "It hurts us here," Jose Luis Luviano, a fan in Mexico City, said as he punched his chest. Tears melted the Mexican flags painted on his cheeks. "There has to be an end to this disgrace where (Americans) treat us like rats and idiots." Seriously though, to have a murder charge reduced for provocation is a well accepted concept in the UK and the US, but insulting a country's flag does not amount to provocation. That is a phucking joke.
I'd watch how you throw the word "Paki" around there, pal. Over there, Paki is the English equivlent of "raghead".
Yeah, I would, too. I just want to remind everybody that however you feel about what went on in Turkey, please act in a civil manner if you are going to continue posting on this thread.
UEFA better hope the scummy Turk teams don't draw an English team in Europe...but we all that won't happen because they'll fix the draw. Frankly, I'd rather them fix the draw and avoid confrontation. We really don't need a repeat of past events. Of course no one forgets and this will all build up to Portugal.
Can you imagine if Chelsea draw one. Boy, oh boy, all the old school lunatic fringe will come out of retirement and the new lot will show up too i'm sure. Quite a few Chelsea went to the Gala away match though in '99 with little or no bother, but i wouldn't expect that to happen again.
Yes, I know. I was being sarcastic. My point was that there was no difference between the racist junk people are talking in this thread and the racist junk the crowd in Sunderland was talking.
Well, you know, sarcasm doesn't really carry well over the internet. I think that's the reason why we have these:
How about you two cretins take your little debate somewhere else and not on a thread about people who got killed eh?
With regards to the issue in hand: Precisely the reason why they won't ever get into 'Europe'. 'Backwards' is too kind a word. Over-excitable people with a dodgy legal system - hmmm, lovely combination. Where hkkninggkng when you need him to straighten things out?
He made a brief reappearance the other day but soon vanished again. I saw an interview a couple of days ago with an English lawyer - I don't know what connection he had with the case but he had been out in Turkey and involved in the original trial. He made the point that the 'provocation' issue had been raised by the defence lawyers at the time, but as they had been unable to produce a single piece of evidence to show that the two Leeds fans had been 'guilty' of any of the supposed acts of provocation, this notion was dismissed out of hand. He was, therefore, extremely puzzled as to why this had suddenly been produced as a reason to quash the original verdict - and made the point that, at a retrial, this evidence would again need to be produced or else there was simply no reason to question the original verdict.
Turks at it ONCE again http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/football/internationals/3015604.stm AND http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/football/internationals/3015788.stm After they scored their second goal in the Confederations Cup vs. Brazil, 10 turkish supporters ran on the pitch to celebrate and bottles were thrown on the pitch at different times during the match. Then look at the crowd problems against Cameroon. What a JOKE! They hit the Cameroon manager with objects too. I would say what they've done in the last few weeks is alot worse than what England supporters did at Sunderland.