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Poland deports Russian football fans freed from detention

One more Russian fan remains jailed on the Polish territory at the moment

WARSAW, July 11 (Itar-Tass) — Polish authorities have deported two Russian football fans who were arrested during the recent Euro’2012 championship and placed to jail for alleged acts of hooliganism.

Two young men, Dmitry Abramov and Pavel Lepikhov, were brought under convoy to the railway station in Terespol on the border with Belarus and put on a train bound for Moscow, said Dmitry Nesterov, the chief of the Russian embassy’s Consulate Department who personally went to Terespol to watch the men’s departure from Poland.

“We just wanted to make sure that everything’s OK,” he said.

Polish police arrested Abramov and Lepikhov hours before a game /that would end in a 1-1 draw/ between the Russian and Polish teams June 12. Two days later, a court found them guilty of hooliganism and of publicly committed purported attack on people.

The judges qualified this as a serious and socially significant offense. There were no victims in the case and the policemen placed on patrols on the city streets on the day of arrest were the only eyewitnesses of the two men’s alleged wrongdoings.

Nor did the prosecution submit any video footage or photos to substantiate the claims against Abramov, a 19-year-old student, and the 29-year-old Lepikhov.

Abramov was sentenced to three months in jail and Lepikhov, to two months. Warsaw county court considered the Russian fans’ appeal Tuesday and mitigated their sentences, reducing their punishment to a suspended one and thus making their release from jail possible.

The termination of the misadventure with the Polish judiciary system does not mean an end of all the aftermaths of the highly controversial incident for the two men, though. Neither of them will be able to enter the countries of the Schengen area for the next five years – a prohibition term imposed on them by the Polish judge.

One more Russian fan remains jailed on the Polish territory at the moment.

The appeals court refused to mitigate Viktor Yeryomin’s punishment and he will remain in prison through to August 12.

The Russian consulate is doing everything in its power to attain the authorities’ decision to keep the man in a detention center where he is serving his term now and not to transfer him to a regular jail.