On the first day of their trial, the defendants formed an inseparable pair: two Russian supporters who hit an Englishman, now disabled, in Marseille during Euro 2016. Same age, 34, same muscular and athletic physique, same cropped hair and dark look. The debates before the Assize Court of Bouches-du-Rhône, however, drew two different portraits of Pavel Kosov, delivery driver, and Mikhail Ivkine, fitness teacher in a Moscow gymnasium.
The verdict handed down on Monday, December 14, ended up separating them. Ivkine is sentenced to three years in prison for throwing a chair, which a video shown for the first time at the hearing suggests that it may not have reached the victim. Arrested in February 2018 in Germany, like his co-accused while traveling to Bilbao to watch a Spartak Moscow match, Ivkine will soon be back home in Moscow, according to his defender Me Julien Pinelli. Kosov, him, is sentenced to ten years in prison for a punch, struck by surprise on the head, which makes collapse “Like a soft doll ” the English supporter, followed by a kick in the buttocks. The court declared their ban from French territory.
In slow motion, frame by frame, the jurors saw and reviewed these few minutes which, on Saturday June 11, 2016 around 5 p.m., changed the life of Andrew Bache, 55, beaten up by a horde of Russian supporters . Before this cursed England-Russia in Marseille, this Englishman was a delivery driver for Tesco supermarkets in Portsmouth.
No excuses
Decked out with the nickname “Pepe”, he supported “Pompey”, his hometown club, had spent his life following the England team. But “Nothing ever linked him to any hooligan movement”, demonstrated his lawyer Me Olivier Rosato. He is now 60% disabled and Harry Bache, his son, told the jurors the life of this father who sometimes forgets that he is his son, can only move with difficulty and suddenly stops in the middle of his sentences. In front of this young man, Mikhail Ivkine stood up: “I regret a lot and I am very sorry for everything Mr. Bache has gone through. “ Pavel Kosov did not apologize. It was much later that, through the voice of his lawyer, he shared his “Best wishes for recovery”.
Andrew Bache owes his life to CRS Patrice Martin, who, through a three-four-minute cardiac massage, had caught up with the thin thread of a departing life. In the front row, under a rain of empty cans thrown by English fans, Patrice Martin described as “A wave, a tsunami” the charge of the Russians, equipped with mouthguards, to assault the English on the course of Estienne-d’Orves, a stone’s throw from the Old Port. “Chairs, umbrellas, anything that could serve as a weapon by destination, it flew. “
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