British hooligan held, to be deported; thieves sentenced to 34 years for media robbery

Briton denied entry into South Africa

JOHANNESBURG — A British soccer hooligan has been detained by South African police and will be deported, police said Saturday as more burglaries of World Cup visitors were reported.

A court also sentenced three thieves to a total of 34 years in prison for robbing foreign journalists. In separate cases, a Uruguayan soccer official and journalists from New Zealand reported thefts at their hotels.

The hooligan is a 42-year-old British male who allegedly has a history of inciting racially motivated violence at sporting events and was detained after flying into South Africa on Friday, police spokeswoman Sally de Beer said. He was to be deported later in the day.

The sentencings came after three journalists — two from Portugal, one from Spain — were robbed of money, camera equipment, laptops and mobile phones last Wednesday in a town northwest of Johannesburg. One of the journalists was robbed at gunpoint.

“It took police no more than 24 hours to arrest these lunatic scoundrels,” South Africa minister of police Nathi Mthetwa said in a statement. “It further took the justice department no more than 48 hours to sentence them. Now this is what we have been echoing: that we will act with swiftness on any criminality.”

Two of the convicted men were sentenced to 15 years imprisonment each for armed robbery, and the third to four years for possession of stolen property. Two of the men are Zimbabwean, the other Nigerian.

“Not only has justice been done in this case, but it has been seen to be done swiftly,” said General Bheki Cele, South Africa’s top police officer.

South Africa has one of the world’s highest rates of violent crime, and the thefts were a reminder of the dangers facing hundreds of thousands of fans coming to watch the tournament.

Authorities have set up 56 dedicated courts to deal quickly with World Cup-related cases.

“No criminal, whether South African or foreign, will terrorize law-abiding citizens or visitors during the 2010 FIFA World Cup and beyond, especially because this is a festival of the beautiful game,” Mthetwa said.

And yet on Saturday, the Uruguayan soccer association said its executive board president, Ernesto Rodriguez Altez, had more than $4,000 taken from the safe in his Cape Town hotel room, and TV New Zealand’s correspondent and cameraman were robbed of all their equipment at the FIFA-approved Sparkling Waters hotel in Rustenburg, foreign editor Max Hayton said. Thieves smashed their hotel room door when the two were out to dinner, he said. The estimated loss was $100,000.