Serbians face murder trial for fan death

The assailants of a French fan who died in Belgrade yesterday will be tried for first-degree murder as Serbia cracks down on rising street violence, the state prosecutor said.

Brice Taton sustained multiple head and chest injuries when Partizan Belgrade fans attacked him with iron bars and baseball bats on Sept. 17, ahead of a Europa League match against Toulouse.

He died 12 days later following multiple operations.

"This is no longer attempted murder, it is first-degree murder and the penalty for this crime is up to 40 years in prison," public prosecutor Slobodan Radovanovic told Belgrade's Beta news agency.

"Soccer violence is not the work of just die-hard fans, it involves members of organised crime groups and we have to work with the other state institutions to gather evidence in order to ban their activities."

Radovanovic said he had asked the Interior Ministry to gather evidence of links between hooligans and organised crime.

Police have arrested 11 suspects, including one they consider the main perpetrator of the attack on 28-year old Taton in front of a central Belgrade bar.

Serbian President Boris Tadic said the government would root out the violence he said threatened the "very basics of civilisation". Serbia would act "in the most serious and strict way" to tackle "all violent and extreme groups".

A government body appointed to crack down on sports violence said it would ban all groups engaged in violence and suspected of organised crime, including drug-dealing.

While soccer violence was rare during communist rule in Serbia and the rest of Yugoslavia, it erupted after a series of bloody conflicts tore the former Yugoslavia apart.

Taton appears to be the first foreign victim of soccer-related violence in Serbia, though Serbs have died in similar incidents in the last 10 years.

A 17-year old fan was killed by a flare launched from one end of the stadium to the other in a 1999 Belgrade derby between Partizan and Red Star.

In December 2007, a Red Star fan attacked a plainclothes police officer with a burning flare and in September 2008 he was sentenced to 10 years in prison for attempted murder.