Reports: Russian Prosecutors Demand Prison Sentences In Soccer Players' Assault Case

Russian news agencies say prosecutors have asked for 17- and 18-month prison sentences for two soccer players whose beating of a government official at a Moscow coffee shop sparked wide outrage.

Prosecutors made the request May 6 in Moscow's Presnensky District Court, according to RIA Novosti and TASS, in the ongoing trial against Pavel Mamayev and Aleksandr Kokorin.

Kokorin, a striker with the Zenit St. Petersburg club, and Mamayev, a Krasnodar F.C. midfielder, were charged with battery and premeditated hooliganism in connection with the October 8 assault on Denis Pak.

The attack occurred after Pak, an ethnic Korean official from the Ministry for Industry and Trade, rebuked them for behaving improperly in a central Moscow coffee shop.

Two other people have also been charged, including Kokorin's younger brother.

Video taken by a surveillance camera and broadcast by national television stations showed Pak being hit over the head with a chair and slapped in the face.

The four men were also accused of beating Vitaly Solovchuk, a driver for television journalist Olga Ushakova, in a separate altercation near a Moscow hotel on the same day.

The attacks damaged the reputation of Russian soccer after the country's successful hosting of the 2018 World Cup months earlier.

Based on reporting by RIA Novosti and TASS

Associated documents