A Belgian appeals court upheld a conviction yesterday against an English soccer fan, Mark Forrester, ruling he must serve a suspended six-month sentence for assaulting police during the Euro 2000 championships last summer.
The court reduced the sentence to six months, suspended for three years, from an initial one-year jail term with six months suspended.
Forrester, one of about 750 England soccer fans arrested in Brussels and Charleroi during Euro 2000 last June, was released from prison last July after serving one-month of his initial jail sentence. The 34year-old Birmingham man was convicted of assaulting police in Brussels under a "fast track" system set up to process cases quickly during the championship.
Forrester, who denies the assault charge, was the only person to be convicted under the system, which required a trial within five days and a sentence within a week.
Forrester emerged shaken from the Brussels courtroom after the decision was given. During the appeal, his lawyers had presented police video footage showing him standing peacefully among a crowd shortly before his arrest witness statements backing his case.
"I can't believe they have still stuck with the conviction and actually argued that the conviction is sound," he told reporters.
His lawyers said they planned to contest the appeal court's decision either in another Belgian appeal - using British police video footage as yet unseen - or on a European level.
"Eventually, we will have to take this case to the European Court of Human Rights if the internal Belgian courts keep on working on this in this way," Forrester's Belgian lawyer, Mr Jan Fermon, commented.