A FIREMAN was today being deported from Portugal after being jailed for two years for rioting in the Algarve resort of Albufeira.
Gary Mann, 47, from Faversham, Kent, will be met off his flight by prison officials and escorted to an unspecified British jail to serve the sentence after his conviction in Portugal last night.
When his sentence was translated, Mann turned to a friend sitting in the public area of the court and mouthed: “I’m going down for two years.”
As Mann was led from court, he claimed: “I wasn’t even there. It’s a stitch up.”
Mann, who was sporting a St George’s cross tattooed on his forearm, was convicted of taking part in a riot and inciting others to riot having urged them to “fight the police”.
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He was one of twelve England fans to appear in court yesterday, charged after clashes in the Algarve on Monday night. Only one was allowed to continue his holiday.
The men arrived in court bruised, exhausted and with cuts and grazes. Their clothes were splattered with blood and dirt. They protested their innocence and accused Portuguese police of baiting them and denying them access to legal representation.
The court was packed with relatives, friends and girlfriends, two of whom sat silently sobbing as the men were charged. Armed officers stood at the entrance to the court as Judge Filipe Marques told the hearing that the 12 were arrested after fighting with police in an area in Albufeira in the early hours of Monday.
Judge Marques told the court that Mann was the ringleader, throwing a bottle at police outside the “la Bamba” bar at about 1.10am before shouting at other England fans to follow his example.
Mann denied starting the trouble and claimed he was nowhere near the bar when the fighting started. Referring to himself in the third person he said: “He saw nothing, not one bottle, not one chair thrown.”
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The trouble on Monday was repeated on Tuesday night when another 33 England fans were arrested by batonwielding Portuguese police. Television crews filmed some fans taunting police, throwing glasses and chairs and trying to wreck a bar. Fans accused of involvement in this disturbance are due in court today.
Mann will be deported with ten other fans, seven of whom received suspended sentences for participating in a riot.
Peter Barmick, 37, from Middlesbrough, was given a nine-month sentence, suspended for three years at the evening session of the court.
Andrew Williams, 22, from Burgess Hill, Sussex; John Parkes, 19, an archaelogy and art history student from Bromsgrove, West Midlands; Daniel Marsh, 20, from Barnsley; Ricky Tsigarides 22, from Cheshunt, Hertfordshire; John Jackson, 22, from Newcastle; and David Jackson, 28, from Peterborough, Cambridgeshire, were all given seven-month jail sentences, suspended for three years.
All six were told that they would be deported and could not return for a year. Paul Donahue, 32, and Jason Boyle, 22, both from Manchester, were cleared of criminal wrongdoing but were told that they could not return to Portugal for five years.
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Jack Ashdown-Hobbs, 19, from Beckley, Oxford, whose father is a consultant psychotherapist at Warneford Hospital, was cleared of wrongdoing but told that he could not return to Portugal for a year. Joe Nicholls, 24, from Aldershot, Hampshire, was freed and walked away from court with friends, but refused to comment.
Mr Donahue, a manager with an insurance company in Manchester, had a black eye, a bruised cheek, and two broken ribs. He told the court that he had been injured when police attacked him as he walked back to his hotel on Monday night. “I don’t know what happened,” he said. “I was on the floor before I realised what was going on. I was hit loads of times.”
The Home Office said last night that if British police had gathered enough evidence, deported fans would still face prosecution in Britain and possibly a banning order.
David Swift, the British police officer leading the liaison operation on the Algarve, said that of those arrested on Monday, only three had any previous convictions and only one of those offences related to football.
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