Updated Statement Regarding PSG v Chelsea Metro Incident

Today summonses were served by the Metropolitan Police Service on 5 Chelsea FC fans in relation to the Paris Metro incident a few weeks ago.

This afternoon there has been a lot of incorrect media reporting about the content of the summonses and their likely outcome, as well as further publication of the fans’ personal details and private life. We can assure concerned Chelsea fans that we are currently working to correct this incorrect and misleading reporting.

We have not seen all of the summonses but we can comment on what we have seen and what we know about this area of law. The summonses are for Section 14b Football Spectators Act football banning orders. They are not for criminal charges of racist offences.  As we stated previously, the Metropolitan Police Service cannot bring charges of racist offences against fans for their alleged actions overseas, only the French police can do that. The summonses do not act as European Arrest Warrants, no fan can be extradited to France on the basis of a summons, nor can they be sent to prison in the UK.

The first hearing of these cases is 25th March 2015, it will come as no surprise that this has been set 2 days prior to the England v Lithuania match. The fact that these summonses were served on the day of the CFCvPSG match is no happy coincidence, and the cynics among us would say it was done to create another media storm, and to further cement a trial by media against these fans. With this in mind, We repeat our warnings of the past few weeks, if you are a Chelsea fan, please think carefully about your social media interaction tonight, as lazy journalism will no doubt continue, with the media publishing comments from twitter or Facebook and many of these may be taken out of context. We are a vocal supporters of freedom of the press so it is a shame that we are having to warn fans about the dangers of exercising their right to freedom of speech on social media, but sadly in relation to this incident, fair reporting has not been conducted by some of the media, and fans need to protect themselves from potential damage to reputation.

For further information, please see our previous statement linked on the right hand side of this page.

Alison Gurden, Barrister & Melanie Cooke, Solicitor