Soccer: Brits caught in hooligan net

By RICHARD LLOYD PARRY in Tokyo

Japan's campaign against World Cup violence began yesterday when two British men were deported because one of them was suspected of being a hooligan.

James Benedict Rayment, 34, from Oxfordshire, was detained at Tokyo's Narita Airport after arriving on a Turkish Airlines flight from Istanbul, immigration officials said.

His name was on a list of potential trouble-makers based on information supplied by the British police.

The other man, also 34, who was not named, was also refused entry because Japanese immigration did not believe he was travelling only as a tourist.

The two were "physically restrained", the report said, and were due to have been sent back to Istanbul on the return flight. Nine days ago a British man was refused entry into South Korea, which is hosting half of the World Cup matches, but this is the first time Japan's painstaking precautions against hooligan infiltration have been put to the test.

The failure to discriminate between suspected hooligans and those thought to be their friends suggests the desperation of the Japanese authorities to eliminate any possibility of trouble, even at the risk of sending home innocent people.

As the two men were being held in a detention room yesterday, a group of 30 police spies from Britain and Germany arrived in Japan to begin their World Cup duties. The so-called "spotters" specialise in anti-hooligan policing and will be on duty at half a dozen Japanese airports to help identify potential troublemakers before they get into sensitive matches.

They were led by Ron Hogg, Assistant Chief Constable of County Durham, who is leading the British police's World Cup operation.

"We know that 7000 fans have bought tickets and we have checked all of them for criminal records," he said on arrival at Narita. "We know of only 11 who do and we have passed this information on to the Japanese police."

The 11 are among 349 other hooligan "risks" who may try to enter Japan for the tournament, and whose details have been passed on to Japan's National Police Agency. Of those 197 will be denied entry if they land in Japan and 152 others will be subject to what are suggestively referred to as "intensive immigration checks".

The multilateral police operation going into action this week is the fruit of more than two years' planning among police in Europe, Japan and Korea. Police in the two host countries, as well as in Britain, have set up 24-hour co-ordination centres for sharing intelligence about the movements of potential hooligans.

Hogg will liaise with the Japanese National Police Agency in Tokyo.

"It certainly does have a bit of a deterrent effect, the fact that we are here," he said yesterday. "I'm very confident that a lot of co-operation is there and if we can maintain that ... I'm sure we can prevent any real disorder."

In the run-up to the World Cup, which opens in Seoul on Friday, the Japanese police have moved to what is virtually a war footing, with almost weekly "anti-hooligan training" in football stadiums all over the country. As a result, trepidation among local people has reached near-hysterical levels, with some hotels turning away foreigners.

Yesterday 650 riot police and 90 vehicles arrived by ferry in the northern island of Hokkaido, where England will play Argentina on June 7 in the tournament's most tensely awaited match.

More than 1000 alleged hard-core England football hooligans are subject to banning orders for the cup - a 10-fold increase in the number who were barred from Euro 2000 - and have been required to surrender their passports.

- INDEPENDENT

nzherald.co.nz/fifaworldcup

Groups and teams | Stars | Schedule | Previous winners

Interactive graphics:
Groups and team profiles