In January 2017, Sergei Gorbachev, director of FC Arsenal fan club, who was convicted in France, returned to his homeland. He could return to Tula before the new year, but decided to stay in prison until mid-January in solidarity with another convicted Russian.
Euro 2016
During the riots at the European Football Championship , the French police detained a bus with four dozen Russian fans. Half of the Russians were released immediately, the second was deported from the country.
Three fans were awaiting trial. They turned out to be the aforementioned Sergey Gorbachev, as well as Alexei Erunov, director of work with fans of FC Lokomotiv, and Dynamo fan Nikolai Morozov.
Later, the court sentenced the Russians to real imprisonment for a term of one to two years.
Gorbachev at the trial
Before the trial, Sergei Gorbachev, nicknamed Brick, appeared second after Alexei Erunov. According to local media, Sergey was relatively calm.
33-year-old Tula, among other things, was accused of using weapons. According to the prosecution, Sergei Gorbachev threw a piece of pavement at his opponents.
The prosecutor provided two photographs showing a man in blue shorts in a crowd of fighting people. The prosecution emphasized that this is enough.
Sergei insisted that he did not attack, but defended himself. According to him, among the defenders were both Russian and English fans. The Russian claimed that Frenchmen of Arab origin attacked them.
The prosecutor in his speech said that he did not believe in such a version of events. He insisted that the Russian came to Marseille to fight, so he demanded 30 months of imprisonment for him. The prosecution also asked the court to ban Gorbachev from entering the country for two years.
Sergei Gorbachev’s lawyer noted that such a punishment is too harsh. All doubts should be interpreted in favor of the accused, but in the photo it is not visible that he wounded someone. The defense insisted that in this chaos, the Russian was simply trying to defend himself.
And finally, Gorbachev himself emphasized that the prosecutor presented the court with only compromising photographs. But he did not show those where the Russian helps the injured English fan.
As a result, the Marseilles court sentenced Tula to eighteen months in prison.
Appeal
The director of the Arsenal fan club, Sergey Gorbachev, has been in the fan movement for more than ten years. He also represents Tula in the PSA - All-Russian Association of Fans.
Therefore, it is obvious that the fans of the Tula Arsenal could not come to terms with the detention of their leader. They raised money for a lawyer for Gorbachev.
An appeal was filed in October 2016. As a result, the prison term was reduced by three months, and the Lokomotiv fan - by six.
In December 2016, the court decided to release Gorbachev, Erunov and Morozov ahead of schedule and deport them to Russia.
In this regard, information appeared in the media that Gorbachev, like Morozov, could celebrate New Year in his native Tula. However, the Arsenal fan asked to be released at the same time as Yerunov.
Upon the arrival of two Russian fans to their homeland, they were greeted with applause. The men answered the journalists' questions about the future plans that the main thing is the family, but after a couple of years they do not exclude the trip to France.