Heysel: In Memoriam (2 Viewers)

[Red]

Not necessarily.

Heaps of things are very open to interpretation.

 

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[AlexDelPiero10]

Scotland's version of manslaughter, 'culpable homocide', has a much more appropriate name in my book.


Seven is correct on the legal matters.


I know it is difficult, but folk need to avoid letting emotions influence their judgement on matters such as this.

Culpable homocide is indeed a more appropriate name.

What's your job exactly by the way? Or are you still studying law?

 

[Bjerknes]

I think it's pretty obvious that those affected by this tragedy, as in the family members of the dead, have every right to hate the guts of Liverpool fans.

 

[IrishZebra]

Maybe. Criminally negligent manslaughter I suppose. But still. Would the same behaviour in a normal stadium have had the same effect? Were the Liverpool fans really supposed to know that THIS would be the result of their actions? I mean, it's not the first time there was hooliganism inside a stadium and in general pretty much everyone was just fine after the game.

I don't know man, the convictions of some Liverpool fans just don't sit well with me.

JBF, classifying it as a murder is a complete joke and there is no judge who will ever think of it as such.

I'd be off the opinion that if you do something illegal and the actual consequences outweight the intended ones, you are culpable for the outcome that happened, by that's not a vaild legal principle here.

 

[AlexDelPiero10]

I'd be off the opinion that if you do something illegal and the actual consequences outweight the intended ones, you are culpable for the outcome that happened by that's not a vaild legal principle here.

But they were convicted because of the outcome, IZ. That's what manslaughter means. The consequences were far worse than the intended ones, but they were there, thus you get convicted for manslaughter. I don't understand what more you could possibly want?

I mean, manslaughter is really debatable already.

 

[AlexDelPiero10]

I think it's pretty obvious that those affected by this tragedy, as in the family members of the dead, have every right to hate the guts of Liverpool fans.

Oddly enough they don't hate Belgium or the Belgian police forces. Far bigger culprits than the Liverpool fans.

If something like this would happen in this day and age, you'd have dozens of lawsuits against Belgium.

 

[Enron]

I think it's pretty obvious that those affected by this tragedy, as in the family members of the dead, have every right to hate the guts of Liverpool fans.

No one's denying that.

 

[IrishZebra]

But they were convicted because of the outcome, IZ. That's what manslaughter means. The consequences were far worse than the intended ones, but they were there, thus you get convicted for manslaughter. I don't understand what more you could possibly want?

I mean, manslaughter is really debatable already.

I never said I wanted anything, I just disagree in principle with the I didn't mean to do it excuse for crimes that end up going from Assault-Murder.

On a legal basis the convictions are sound, I never said otherwise...

 

[Red]

Culpable homocide is indeed a more appropriate name.

What's your job exactly by the way? Or are you still studying law?

I just finished my studies a couple of weeks ago, so I'm just starting to look for a job.

Oddly enough they don't hate Belgium or the Belgian police forces. Far bigger culprits than the Liverpool fans.

If something like this would happen in this day and age, you'd have dozens of lawsuits against Belgium.

Interestingly, at Hillsborough, the victims' families brought actions against the police, rather than against all the Liverpool fans who had forced their way into the stand, despite not having tickets, and who were largely responsible for the crush.

 

[AlexDelPiero10]

I never said I wanted anything, I just disagree in principle with the I didn't mean to do it excuse for crimes that end up going from Assault-Murder.

On a legal basis the convictions are sound, I never said otherwise...

To be honest I think your principle wouldn't be fair at all. You have to keep in mind that not all manslaughter charges are the result of violence. I mean, okay, if you're negligent, you should be punished, but to call it murder? Sometimes small things can have huge consequences and I think we need to make the difference here.

Interestingly, at Hillsborough, the victims' families brought actions against the police, rather than against all the Liverpool fans who had forced their way into the stand, despite not having tickets, and who were largely responsible for the crush.

Maybe that's because of the build up to the game or different media attention afterwards. Or the fact that Liverpool fans died that day. The rivalry between Italian football and Liverpool might have the response a lot more emotional and I think that in such a condition you want to find one culprit and act out on him.

 

[IrishZebra]

To be honest I think your principle wouldn't be fair at all. You have to keep in mind that not all manslaughter charges are the result of violence. I mean, okay, if you're negligent, you should be punished, but to call it murder? Sometimes small things can have huge consequences and I think we need to make the difference here.

I specified Assault->Murder(obviously not verbal assault ). The Liverpool 'fans' charged. If you were in a crowded room and 1/4 of you decided to run and some women and children in the corner you are 100% aware of what squishing people can lead to (death).

Of course my opinion has a lot to do with the sentences handed down for manslaughter in Ireland.

A kid stabbed another to death because he asked him for directions, he got 4 years.
He should have got life in prison.

 

[bianconero]

I realised that we don't even have a thread to commemorate the victims of the Heysel tragedy. For obvious reasons, I think that would be proper at this time.

No Liverpool bashing, no arguments, no finger-pointing.

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The horror of Heysel scarred in the mind
Liverpool meet Juventus on Tuesday for the first time since one of the sport's greatest tragedies 20 years ago. For one grieving Italian the memory is painfully fresh

The spring of 1985 also happened to be the springtime of Alberto Guarini's life. His 21st birthday was weeks away, he had just won the local mixed doubles tennis championship with his sister Paola and he was deeply in love with his girlfriend Stefania - they were contemplating marriage - whom he had followed to university at Bari. There he had studied dentistry and just passed his exams. And to cap it all, his beloved heroes, the mighty Juventus, were in the European Cup final to face the great Liverpool, whom Alberto esteemed and admired.

Alberto's father, Bruno, had promised him a gift - any gift - as reward for passing the exams and in Alberto's mind there was no doubt: he and his father would travel together from their little town of Mesagne in Puglia, southern Italy, to Brussels for the game.

That fateful day would be the last of Alberto's life - and that of 38 others not unlike him, some younger, mostly older. The third, lethal, charge by mobs of drunken Liverpool supporters across the terracing at Heysel Stadium into the terrified, fleeing Italians, trapped Alberto and his father against a terrace barrier close to the wall at the edge of the stand.

"When the English came running at us, Alberto was caught," Bruno Guarini remembers. "He shouted at me: 'I don't know whether to go under or over it.' I shouted back for him to go under. His last words were, 'Papa, mi stanno schiaccando' - daddy, they're crushing me. I remember it all, like a film right up to the last moment, when the film stops and I don't see it any more. At night, though, I awake suddenly and I see it again."

The film stops because Bruno Guarini, badly injured, lost consciousness. When he came to, he says: "The Red Cross had arrived. I was bruised all over black and blue. I insisted to them that I look for Alberto before going with them and eventually I found him - dead. The Red Cross wanted to take me away but I could not leave his side. I simply put his identity card in his pocket, then they took me to hospital. We had flown to Brussels together singing on the plane. And I flew back with the body of my son."

It is strange, on the eve of next Tuesday's surreal and emotive fixture at Anfield, to walk the streets of Mesagne's lovely baroque historic centre with Bruno and to recall that I myself had seen - in panorama though not in detail - the death of his son and 38 others in the fated Z block at Heysel. I was close to the halfway line, above the slaughter. This was the stand for which Guarini had requested - and been promised - tickets, in which he and his son would have been safe, until the allocation was switched at the last moment by the travel agency which flew them from Brindisi.

Strange to recall the nightmare of that day and night: the carpet of broken beer bottles and cans in the centre of Brussels and around the stadium; those three charges into the small group of Italian fans, whose main contingent was at the other end of the ground - the third across open terracing into the fleeing crowd - and the fateful collapse of the wall, bodies tumbling down and the whooping and war dancing that followed among the English.

I first met Bruno Guarini 15 years ago. At that time, five years after his death, nothing had changed in Alberto's room. By his bed lay a Juventus magazine; in a cupboard hung his clothes and the Juventus shoulder bag in which he had taken a packed lunch to Brussels that day, and which returned with his body.

Now that part of the Guarinis' house is largely closed up but Alberto's trophies remain, a row of them, for the tennis and football tournaments in which he had been so successful. The walls of the bedroom are now lined with photographs - of his smile, his hopes and handsome youth.

"They say that time passes and heals," reflects Guarini now. "But time does nothing. It all remains before my eyes as though it were yesterday. I can see the look in his eyes, I can hear his voice. For the rest of you, for the fans even, time passes. But for a father who lost his son it all stays locked under my skin and never heals."

What has changed is that Alberto's sister Paola has married, lives next door and has given birth to a son, Gabriele, now two years old. "He is my joy," says his grandfather. A little Alberto? "Of course."

As for Tuesday's game, Guarini has decided to watch it. "I will do so for Alberto. I'm going to imagine him sitting by my side. It's the way he would have wanted it."

Mesagne is typical of the towns across central and southern Italy from which those in Z block largely came - those unable to get tickets for the Juventus end of the stadium. Not a wealthy place by any means, it lies on a low plain of deep red soil which stretches back inland from the port of Brindisi on Italy's "heel". Many inhabitants work the land around; its few factories package olives and artichokes and process tomatoes into pasta sauce.

Here Bruno Guarini grew up as a fanatical Juventus fan, a zeal inherited by his son. Bruno worked as a representative for the pharmaceutical industry, Alberto opted for dentistry while Paola trained as a pharmacist. Paola was instructed on May 29, 1985 to ensure a video recording of the match in Brussels.

Alberto could not have been more excited. He had called repeatedly from Bari to ensure that his father had secured good seats. "And of course Alberto knew Liverpool," says Guarini. "They were famous, a wonderful team, and we presumed the fans were like us, just crazy about football." Alberto knew England, he had been on three English language courses, twice in London, and had been happy there.

His mother Lucia, however, was nervous about the trip to Brussels as she had been during Alberto's studies, "not because of the hooligans, just because it was so far away".

Bruno and Alberto took the plane: "It was like a festival, flags and singing." Paola set the tape and switched on the television. Then came reports of trouble in the crowd; Lucia switched it off.

"We arrived early at the stadium and saw the English drunk out of their minds, bare torsos in the heat," says Guarini. "I said to Alberto, 'We'll go far away from them near the wall'. It was the worst decision because those close to the English were the ones to escape.

"Yes," he says. "I know all the excuses. It was a terrible stadium and I cannot believe that Uefa could choose it for a final between the two biggest teams in Europe, each with thousands of fans. I also cannot believe we were allowed to buy tickets in the same end as the English when our people - and there are some bad ones among them too - were at the other end. And the police: they were non-existent. There was no protection, no line to separate the fans.

"But does any of this justify what happened? Does this justify killing people? They call this a 'tragedy' like an earthquake or natural disaster but it wasn't a tragedy, as we say, it was a carnage."

"It was," says Lucia quietly, "the hand of man."

"For 50 years," says Guarini, "I'd thought of England as a civilised country. A civilised people. But what shocks me is that we've heard nothing from Liverpool or its supporters, no apology or solidarity, nothing to say they did anything wrong."

Whatever the sentiment may or may not be on Merseyside now - especially in the wake of the horror at Hillsborough - Alberto's memory lives on in Mesagne. There is an Alberto Guarini foundation managed by Guarini's best friend, a banker, Gino Sconosciuto, which for many years sponsored a dentistry place at Bari University for a local student otherwise financially incapable of taking it. Recently the foundation has switched to fund a post at Lecce University to take part in research into excavations beneath Mesagne, which illuminate the history of the pre-Roman Messapi people who populated the region from the 18th century BC.

Moreover the tennis court on which Alberto and his sister used to play is now called the "Campo Alberto Guarini" and each year in Mesagne the foundation organises a tennis and football tournament with trophies bearing Alberto's name.

The cemetery in Mesagne lies adjacent to the town centre. Here family tombs are arranged like miniature buildings along a grid of little streets. That of the Guarini family is of stone, lined inside with white marble. Alberto's grave is below that of his grandparents, both of whom outlived him. On it is a photograph, the last of him to be taken, by his girlfriend Stefania, his arms folded, smiling from the marble. Below it is the Greek letter Alpha next to his birthdate and Omega next to the date 29.5.85.

"This is my second home," says Guarini, pointing to the plot beneath Alberto's "which awaits me."

Flowers are replaced here twice a week. Guarini contemplates his son's picture with eyes that change in a flicker from animation to a distant, heartbroken stare. Outside, drops of heavy rain clunk against the ironwork.

Fifteen years ago Guarini had drilled his forefingers into his temples and said: "Heysel, that world will drive me mad." Now, here, he reflects: "I think all the time, if only I had given him some other gift. If only the plane had not taken off because of the weather. If only..." And he repeats: "For a father to have his son and watch him die is the greatest sorrow. But to lose your son in that way, killed by those people, is beyond sorrow. It is something time cannot cure, not even 20 years, it leaves you dead in your heart."

What really matters is this man's feelings.

 

[AlexDelPiero10]

I specified Assault->Murder(obviously not verbal assault ). The Liverpool 'fans' charged. If you were in a crowded room and 1/4 of you decided to run and some women and children in the corner you are 100% aware of what squishing people can lead to (death).

Of course my opinion has a lot to do with the sentences handed down for manslaughter in Ireland.

A kid stabbed another to death because he asked him for directions, he got 4 years.
He should have got life in prison.

Well, I hope it's an extreme example.

IMO it's not the same as in a crowded room. They also didn't exactly squish them. It's because the stadium was in such a poor condition that there were fatalities. Let's say you push someone through a wall, but the wall gives and suddenly the guy falls to his death. I think that's a fair example.

What really matters is this man's feelings.

Of course, but is labelling Liverpool fans murders going to do anyone any good?

 

[IrishZebra]

Well, I hope it's an extreme example.

IMO it's not the same as in a crowded room. They also didn't exactly squish them. It's because the stadium was in such a poor condition that there were fatalities. Let's say you push someone through a wall, but the wall gives and suddenly the guy falls to his death. I think that's a fair example.

The Justice System in this country is far too lenient.

I disagree, but I see your point.

 

[David01]

you really have no idea what you are talking about
ok the stadium was out of date and their wasn't enough police but that doesn't change the fact that those people died because of actions of the Liverpool fans
no point in denying that
nobody would have died if it weren't for those animals
there were people dead on the pitch covered with a sheet and still they kept charging the Juve fans
the state of the stadium and the lack of police maybe gave them the opportunity
but they decided for themselves to go and get those Italians
their is only one aggressor here and that was the Liverpool fan who charged with the intent to hurt Italians
the stadium or police wasn't the reason of this drama, those drunken animals were

 

[AlexDelPiero10]

you really have no idea what you are talking about
ok the stadium was out of date and their wasn't enough police but that doesn't change the fact that those people died because of actions of the Liverpool fans
no point in denying that
nobody would have died if it weren't for those animals
there were people dead on the pitch covered with a sheet and still they kept charging the Juve fans
the state of the stadium and the lack of police maybe gave them the opportunity
but they decided for themselves to go and get those Italians
their is only one aggressor here and that was the Liverpool fan who charged with the intent to hurt Italians
the stadium or police wasn't the reason of this drama, those drunken animals were

If you mean that, if the Liverpool fans had done nothing, no one would have died, you're correct.

If the stadium had been okay, no one would have died either.

Had the police done their job, nothing would have happened.

You see where I'm going with this? There's a reason they called it manslaughter and not murder. And drunken animals.. well.. I've seen Juventus ultra do things that are hardly any better. I don't know why someone who is a fan of calcio thinks he should get on his high horse. If anything, Italian teams have simply been lucky. At least the English have changed their mentality!

 

[David01]

but those Juve ultras weren't there, the English were aggressive against
ordinary fans
and I only mentionned the stadium cause there was an idea here that the stadium was at fault, imo it's still the people in the stadium who can cause tragedies of this nature
btw I'm not so sure if this wouldn't have happened in a stadium that was up-to date
the general mentality has changed since then but I wouldn't be to sure that this can't happen nowadays

 

[AlexDelPiero10]

but those Juve ultras weren't there, the English were aggressive against
ordinary fans
and I only mentionned the stadium cause there was an idea here that the stadium was at fault, imo it's still the people in the stadium who can cause tragedies of this nature
btw I'm not so sure if this wouldn't have happened in a stadium that was up-to date
the general mentality has changed since then but I wouldn't be to sure that this can't happen nowadays

Come on. All research so far indicates the stadium was possibly the biggest issue.

The Juventus ultrà were there. How could they not be?

 

[JBF]

In that section he means.

 

[David01]

they weren't next to the Liverpool kop but more on the other side of the stadium
me and my dad were sitting above them in a seated area and they were below us
and my point is simply that the state of the stadium aggrevated the events but it wasn't the cause of it
those fans running riot caused it