Soccer: Euro 2000 fan awaits result of appeal

An England football fan jailed in Brussels for rioting during the Euro 2000 championships is awaiting the result of his appeal.

Mark Forrester, 34, hopes that new video evidence shown at his retrial last month will be enough to clear his name.

His hopes were raised when even the public prosecutor acknowledged there was nothing in the footage linking him to trouble in the Belgian capital on the eve of the England-Germany game in Charleroi.

The police film was not shown at Mr Forrester's original court hearing last June because he was dealt with under "fast track" legal procedures introduced specifically to deal with the backlog of soccer riot cases during the Euro 2000 tournament.

In the end Mr Forrester, of Great Barr, Birmingham, was the only English fan detained and put on trial. He was jailed for a year by Judge Regine Claeys, who said it had been proven that the accused man had been "provocative and aggressive".

At his appeal last month the police video footage showed no sign of him being a ringleader stirring up rioting as alleged by the sole Belgian police "hooligan spotter" who gave evidence.

The public prosecutor said he had clearly not been a suitable case for the "fast-track" procedure.

Mr Forrester, a 34-year-old married man with a three-year-old daughter, lost his job as a plant hire manager after his conviction and is still out of work.

His Euro MP Liz Lynne, who has complained to the Mayor of Brussels, said: "I want to know why Mark was arrested in the first place, as there seems to be no substantial evidence whatsoever against him. Was he just someone to convict and make an example of?"

Mr Forrester's case is being backed by Stephen Jakobi of Fair Trials Abroad, who said on the eve of the appeal verdict: "Belgium's fast-track system puts the defendant's defence under the control of the prosecutor and is the only deliberate legislative defiance of the European Convention of Human Rights that I am aware of.