J'lem soccer crush findings awaited, Beitar crowned champions

Police Commissioner David Cohen on Monday gave the committee investigating Sunday's soccer stampede at Teddy Stadium in Jerusalem three days to submit its findings on the way the Jerusalem District police handled the incident.

Four Beitar Jerusalem soccer fans were seriously hurt and more than 40 suffered minor injuries Sunday when thousands of Beitar fans stormed the field after their team beat Hapoel Petah Tikva 2-0.

Police presence at the stadium was heavy, but Major General Ilan Franco, police chief of the Jerusalem District, said after the incident that the police had not prepared for the possibility that the fans would try to rush the field.

Members of the committee investigating the incident - led by the head of the traffic department, Avi Ben-Hemo - went to Teddy Stadium on Monday to examine the scene.

The committee, which includes several other police officials as well as Dr. Shuki Dekel, head of the sports administration in the Science, Culture and Sport Ministry, has been tasked with determining whether the Jerusalem District acted appropriately in deciding not to further boost the police presence at the game and whether it was overly complacent in failing to anticipate that fans would come down from the stands and try to climb the gates leading to the playing field. The panel is also expected to examine whether the police applied the lessons from a similar incident that took place at a soccer game in Haifa six years ago.

As criticism mounts, Jerusalem police, rescue forces and soccer fans are hurling accusations at one another, and senior Jerusalem District police officials are also blaming each other for the incident.

"When I heard Franco's explanations, I was alarmed," said a senior officer who knows the district commander well on a personal and professional level. "As the district commander, Franco has to be ready for the most extreme scenarios, always. Why did he put 500 police officers on salary there? If he wasn't prepared for problematic scenarios, he could have replaced the police with security guards and there wouldn't have been any difference.

"Franco has a double problem: Not only does it look like he wasn't prepared as he should have been for the game, he also spoke to the media in a way that only damaged him. He admitted that he wasn't suitably prepared, but argued that this was exactly how he should have prepared. He's in a tight spot now."

For his part, Franco told reporters on Monday that the police had been suitably prepared at the stadium, and placed the blame for the incident squarely on the soccer fans.

However, he also said that if there had been more police officers on the scene, the police would have been able to handle the crowd crush.

The commander of the Jerusalem fire department, Moshe Suissa, charged police with blocking some of the emergency exits, pressing the fans against the fences.

The Jerusalem District had recently been looking into removing the fences separating the stands from the field - a move that would likely have prevented Sunday's injuries. An external report submitted to the police by a safety engineer described just such an incident as that which occurred on Sunday, and an internal committee established by Franco recommended that the fences be gradually removed before the soccer season started.

However, Franco did not implement the recommendation because he thought that doing so would make it more difficult to maintain order.

"The decision is entirely mine," Franco said on Monday. "You don't remove fences before one game, you remove fences as a policy."

Beitar crowned champions unceremoniously

A day after a pitch invasion that left 50 of its fans injured, two of them seriously, Beitar Jerusalem was crowned Premier League champion in unceremonious circumstances on Monday.

Beitar was handed its fifth title - and first in nine years - after an Israeli Football Association tribunal deducted two points from Maccabi Tel Aviv, Jerusalem's only remaining challenger, for financial irregularities.

The points were deducted after the club was found guilty last week of having signed a double contract with Croat forward Ivan Rezic. Maccabi was also fined NIS 60,000 and handed a three-point suspended sentence. The panel cleared Maccabi on a further charge of failing to report to the IFA budgets committee expenditure on a new synthetic pitch at its Kiryat Shalom training ground.

While the points deduction finished off Maccabi's mathematical chance of challenging Beitar for the title, its immediate concern now is holding on to a place in European competition. In its remaining three games Maccabi faces Beitar, fellow European competition contender Hapoel Tel Aviv and relegation struggler Hakoah Ramat Gan.

Sources at the IFA's legal department said the recent decision to dock three points from relegated club Hapoel Petah Tikva had created a distortion as the punishment de facto did not affect Petah Tikva, while Maccabi Tel Aviv was left facing a situation that could deny it a lucrative European competition ticket.

Maccabi owner Loni Herzikovic said he would appeal against the decision . Herzikovic has accused the IFA of having a personal vendetta against him.

"The players have sweated throughout the season to earn a place in Europe and it is shameful that [the head of the IFA's budgets committee] Yair Rabinovich is settling his account with Loni in this fashion .... It is a pity that the IFA handed the championship to Beitar off the soccer field."