Champions League final: Paris police chief apologises to Liverpool fans as CCTV evidence deleted

The chief of Paris police has apologised to Liverpool fans for the 'failure' that led to the harrowing scenes before last month's Champions League final.

Liverpool supporters were tear-gassed and crushed by police who blamed the alleged presence of '30,000 fans who arrived without tickets', with eventual winners Real Madrid also coming forward to complain about their travelling support's treatment.

A hearing was held in Paris on Thursday to try and determine what went wrong, and police chief Didier Lallement admitted his force were at fault.

"It is obviously a failure," he said. "It was a failure because people were pushed around and attacked. It was a failure because the image of the country was undermined.

"Perhaps I was wrong [about the estimated number of fans]. Whether there were 40,000, 30,000 or 20,000, it didn't change the fact that there were tens of thousands of people who could not fit in."

During the hearing, it also emerged that the CCTV footage of the scenes outside the stadium has been deleted, meaning Liverpool supporters' claims of being mugged and attacked by locals can no longer be verified.

"The images are available for seven days. They are then automatically destroyed," said Erwan Le Prevost, director of institutional relations at the FFF.

"We should have had a requisition to provide them to the different populations [organisations]. The images are extremely violent."


Source : 90min