Detained Chileans freed two days after football brawl in Argentina / Photo: Juan Mabromata - AFP
Detained Chileans freed two days after football brawl in Argentina
Argentina on Friday released 104 Chileans detained following a bloody brawl that erupted during a knock-out Copa Sudamericana match this week.
The fighting brought an early end to the game between Independiente and visiting Universidad de Chile in Buenos Aires on Wednesday.
Fans stripped of their documents during the violence received temporary travel documents enabling them to return home, Chilean diplomatic sources said.
"They beat me with clubs and iron bars in the stands, they stole everything from me," Ignacio Castro, a 38-year-old psychologist from Chile with bruises on his face, told AFP outside the Chilean consulate in Buenos Aires.
"When I went down to get help from the police, they took me to the hospital, stitched me up and then arrested me," he said.
An official for the Argentine side told AFP that 125 people were arrested after the second-leg encounter, which was abandoned after 48 minutes. Of 19 people injured, two remain in a serious condition.
"Nothing justified the barbarity or the lynching that occurred," Chilean Minister of the Interior Alvaro Elizalde told reporters outside the hospital where two Chilean men have reportedly undergone surgery, one for a head injury and the other for a cervical fracture.
One jumped from the stands after being cornered by Argentine fans, and the fact that a roof below cushioned his fall saved his life, a Chilean official said.
- '20 legal cases' -
A stun grenade was among the objects hurled by fans as the last-16 second-leg encounter in the regional competition at the Libertadores de America stadium was initially suspended shortly after half time and then abandoned.
Independiente has won seven Copa Libertadores titles, and has twice won the Copa Sudamericana.
The club's stadium has been closed while a court-ordered investigation takes place.
Bullet cases, rocks, torn out seats, pieces of iron and ripped-out dry wall, littered the part of the stadium where the fighting broke out.
"The prosecutor requested the closure because there are blood stains in the stands and forensic investigations are still pending," Javier Alonso, Security Minister of Buenos Aires, told local Radio10.
He said "some 20 legal cases" are likely in the wake of the incident.
"There are people who have to be held accountable because there was a security company that was supposed to be there, and wasn't," he said.
FIFA President Gianni Infantino called the violence "barbaric" and called for "example-setting sanctions".
Those could include disqualification of one or both clubs, something that last occurred in 2015.
South American football is no stranger to fan violence, which has claimed hundreds of lives across the continent in the past 20 years.
P.Iglesias--GM
