· Sentences were reduced and then suspended
· Supporters claim the four men were set up by police
* Tom Kington in Rome
* The Guardian,
* Saturday May 3 2008
Four Manchester United fans locked up in Italian jails since December walked free yesterday, after winning an appeal to get charges for fighting with Rome police reduced and their sentences cut.
Friends and relatives of the men celebrated outside a Rome court after the decision, claiming the four had been set up by police to make an example of them, and that they had been beaten by officers and denied access to proper legal assistance.
"I am absolutely elated," said Janet Dillon, whose son Kyle, 24, was originally sentenced to two years and five months for clashing with police and local fans outside Rome's Olympic stadium on December 12, ahead of Manchester United's Champions League match with Roma.
Fellow fan Richard Wimmer, 39, received the same sentence, while Nicholas Lukacs, 18 and Michael Burke, 35, received two years and four months.
Yesterday the sentences were reduced to 16 months, allowing the release of the four on suspended sentences. Defence lawyer Roberta Ceschini said she had not seen the judge's ruling, but that it was likely two charges of violence had been dropped.
At the hearing, the men pleaded guilty to resisting arrest, but relatives claimed they were innocent. "We were advised to accept this verdict in order to get the boys home immediately," said Lukacs's sister Katerina. Seeking to overturn all charges would have led to a longer trial, said Ceschini.
Janet Dillon, whose son is registered as partially sighted, said she would now seek to overturn the remaining charge.
Lukacs's mother, Anne, said her son, now saddled with a criminal record, would be unable to return to his job at a law firm.
"There is no such word as justice here," said Carmon Ducker, Burke's girlfriend.
On December 12, the four fans ignored advice from Manchester United to board a laid-on bus that would have taken them into the Olympic stadium, preferring to catch a city bus which left them on the Duca D'Aosta bridge nearby. "The fan buses were arriving four to five hours before the game and they were concerned about what had happened inside the stadium at the previous match," said Janet Dillon.
Manchester fans were baton charged in the stands in April 2007 by police.
At their trial, the four were accused of throwing objects and clashing with Roma fans and police on the bridge, but Ceschini said that charge had now weakened.
"The men would have been difficult to identify at the scene and the evidence against them appeared inconsistent," she said.
Relatives said that the four had also been persuaded to face a rapid trial with limited evidence in December. "Thanks to poor translators they were under the impression they would sign and go home," said Anne Lukacs.
"They were made into scapegoats," said Janet Dillon.
The sentence appears to have worked as a warning. One fan who returned to Rome in April for Manchester's subsequent Champions League game said few supporters were prepared "to walk the bridge" to get to the stadium.
When Janet Dillon saw her son in prison on Christmas Eve, he was still bruised from being headbutted and coshed in the groin by police, she claimed. "We got tea and sympathy from the British embassy," said Dillon, adding that the Manchester United manager ,Sir Alex Ferguson, had written to say there was nothing he could do to help. "I will never go to Old Trafford again," she said.
Unlikely support came from Roma fans, who waved a banner reading "Freedom for the Roma 4" at last month's match against Manchester Utd. A relative of Dillon added that fellow prisoners had been "great," even lending Dillon clothes when he was prevented from receiving his own from his family.
