December 14, 2020 14:03 GMT – RFE/RL

Two 34-year-old Russian men have been sentenced to prison terms of three years and 10 years for a savage attack on an English football supporter at the 2016 European championships in France.

Mikhail Ivkin received a three-year term and Pavel Kossov the longer sentence on December 14 for their role in a beating that left 55-year-old Briton Andrew Bache with a brain injury.

Bache, from Portsmouth in southeast England, was too frail to attend the trial, but his son Harry represented him in the courtroom in the southern French city of Aix-en-Provence.

“Mr. Bache is so physically and psychologically affected, with a condition somewhere between Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s, that he is unable to give evidence, even by video link,” said Bache’s lawyer, Olivier Rosato, at the start of the trial on December 7.

The two men were arrested in Germany in February 2018, 20 months after Bache suffered his injuries, while they were on their way to a match featuring Spartak Moscow in Spain.

They have been in custody in France since their arrest.