Foreign police to help Portugal monitor hooligans at Euro 2004
First Published: Feb 06, 2004
At least 118 foreign police officers will help their Portuguese counterparts combat hooligans during this summer's Euro 2004 football finals, the chief of the tournament's security committee said.
General Leonel de Carvalho, who heads the Portuguese interior ministry panel, said Britain would have the biggest contingent with 20 officers, followed by Germany with 18 and Holland with 10.
He told Portuguese radio TSF the foreign police would help monitor fans from their home countries and offer advice to Portuguese authorities should there be trouble during the three-week event, which gets underway on June 12.
"They will help us greatly because they already know, and are in permanent contact with football fans in their homeland," he said.
"They can play a really important role in helping us with dialogue with the fans and with background information."
De Carvalho said negotiations were continuing with police forces from the nations taking part in the tournament and the number of foreign police who will come to Portugal may still rise.
Portugal has cancelled all police holiday leave during the finals and has pledged to hire another 2,000 officers to beef up security.
The government has already spent some 16.5 million euros (21 million dollars) on new police equipment which includes more than 150 new police cars, the country's first water cannon vehicles, batons, riot gear, pepper spray and police dogs.
Portuguese police staged a full-scale rehearsal of their ability to respond to football violence during Euro 2004 at the end of January at a stadium in the southern Algarve province, which will host three of the tournament's matches. Two other rehearsals will take place before the June kick-off.
Up to 1.2 million football fans are expected to attend the finals.
__________________
|