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Four police hurt in clashes with Saint-Etienne ultras

Four French police officers were hurt during clashes outside Saint-Etienne's stadium after Monaco crushed the home team, police and local government said on Saturday.

Four police hurt in clashes with Saint-Etienne ultras
Saint-Etienne's supporters clash with police following the French L1 football match between Saint-Etienne and Monaco. Photo: Romain Lafabregue/AFP

The Ligue 1 game was played on Friday with the two stands behind the goals in the Stade Geoffroy Guichard closed as punishment for incidents involving Saint-Etienne's ultras during another heavy home defeat in the derby against Lyon on November 5th.

After the match in the central city on Friday, which Saint-Etienne lost 4-0, police said around 200 people gathered outside the entry to the stadium looking for trouble and vandalising property. The ultras started throwing stones at police, who responded by firing teargas grenades.

Among the police who drove the crowd away, two were taken to hospital for treatment, one of them with a hand injury which is expected to keep him off duty for three weeks.

The only supporter arrested, a 21-year-old, was held overnight and was due in court in Saint-Etienne on Saturday afternoon on charges of throwing a projectile at the police.

POLICE

Denmark convicts man over bomb joke at airport

A Danish court on Thursday gave a two-month suspended prison sentence to a 31-year-old Swede for making a joke about a bomb at Copenhagen's airport this summer.

Denmark convicts man over bomb joke at airport

In late July, Pontus Wiklund, a handball coach who was accompanying his team to an international competition, said when asked by an airport agent that
a bag of balls he was checking in contained a bomb.

“We think you must have realised that it is more than likely that if you say the word ‘bomb’ in response to what you have in your bag, it will be perceived as a threat,” the judge told Wiklund, according to broadcaster TV2, which was present at the hearing.

The airport terminal was temporarily evacuated, and the coach arrested. He later apologised on his club’s website.

“I completely lost my judgement for a short time and made a joke about something you really shouldn’t joke about, especially in that place,” he said in a statement.

According to the public prosecutor, the fact that Wiklund was joking, as his lawyer noted, did not constitute a mitigating circumstance.

“This is not something we regard with humour in the Danish legal system,” prosecutor Christian Brynning Petersen told the court.

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