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The following item is written by Spurs fan Ian Trow and relates to the recent court case which followed last year's game at Fratton Park. Ian writes about the case affecting he and his 13 year old son - Lewis. There is a footnote from the Trust:-"It's nine months to the day the CCTV images of 16 Spurs supporters were distributed by the police to all national media, and these images were placed in all papers and on front page of Crimestoppers next to the likes of murderers and drug dealers. For the first time in the nine months since I woke up in a hotel in Germany and saw my face and that of my 13 year old son on the TV screen we can now hold our heads up high, having been proved innocent of all charges.I cannot go into full detail, as we will be bringing civil action - certainly on behalf of Lewis, as I can get all costs covered under Legal Aid - against the police and the CPS for the damage their total negligence and lack of due care caused. In summary though, in December, 11 of the 16 people identified themselves to the police (including one 13 and two 15 year old boys) and were all charged with engaging in racist or indecent chanting. In February four of these people pleaded guilty, the other seven pleaded not guilty. The difference was that the four who pleaded guilty were singing the "Sol, Sol" song which certainly is indecent.The other seven were singing songs such as "We've got Ledley at the back". These seven people were then banned by Tottenham Hotspur under the premise that we had been arrested, and that contravened the terms of our season ticket (the fact that we had not been found guilty was irrelevant). In early May all seven people were offered cautions, as they had not been singing indecent songs. Five took what I would call the easy route out and accepted the caution. I decided to uphold my principles: I had done nothing wrong so why should my son and I admit any form of guilt (which in effect is what a caution does).The police then offered to drop all charges against me if I would get my son to accept a reprimand (they were obviously scared of future repercussions by my son). I rejected this out of principle as well.So in the middle of May, the two of us went to trial at Portsmouth Magistrates Court and despite there being no evidence to support the charge brought against us we were found guilty, basically by association of singing indecent songs: i.e. we can prove bad songs were sung, we can prove you were at the ground, therefore we assume you were singing these songs. My legal counsel advised me afterwards that this was always going to be the case, it was purely a show trial, in front of national media (invited by the Police). We were each given a three year Football Banning Order.Last Friday [11 September] we had a full re-trial at Portsmouth Crown Court in front of the most senior judge in Hampshire. I was quite surprised no media was present. The prosecution showed their evidence, to which the judge said "Is that it?" We asked for immediate dismissal of the case (before we even had put our defence case) and after two minutes of deliberation the judge that came back and said, "Not guilty, no case to answer and that is totally unanimous of us all - and you can tell by the time it took, it was not a hard decision." The judge then ripped into the CPS that this had been brought into his courtroom, and even been tried in the first case.All costs have been awarded to me and the football banning orders lifted. I have been in touch with the club and expect to hear early next week that the season tickets will be returned.I would like to thank my family, friends and fellow supporters who have supported me in this, and also the Tottenham Supporters' Trust who gave some invaluable advice and have been in contact with Spurs during the whole scenario. I am writing this with a sore head (as you can imagine I celebrated hard ) and with a big smile on my face. I will be going into Tottenham for a few (or maybe more than a few) drinks before the Man United game, as I am now allowed back into the borough of Haringey on match days, although I do not have ticket for match.Thanks for the support. Ian Trow
