A Turkish prosecutor said yesterday he had formally charged four men with the murders of two Leeds fans in street clashes last week and demanded they spend up to 30 years in prison.
Christopher Loftus, 37, and Kevin Speight, 40, were killed in downtown Istanbul the night before Leeds played Galatasaray.
'If convicted, each will have to serve their prison term twice because it is not clear who killed who and there are two murders,' prosecutor Osman Ikizoglu, who indicted the suspects, said.
But Ikizoglu also said the possible prison terms for each suspect should be commuted by one-fourth, saying the Turkish youths were provoked by Leeds fans. Those charged were named as Ali Umit Demir, Ozkan Balci, Suleyman Aydin and Suleyman Gokhan Guven.
Turkish papers last week reported Demir as saying: 'I stabbed him.' It was not clear whether he was referring to Loftus, who was killed at the scene, or Speight, who died in hospital.
According to the indictment, drunken Leeds supporters angered Turks with their outrageous behaviour. 'The English supporters broke the windows of cars and businesses in the area. One Englishman even rubbed a Turkish flag on his genitals,' Ikizoglu quoted the indictment as saying.