The worldwide organization that represents the rights of professional football players on Tuesday released video footage purportedly showing the beating of a Russian football player by stadium security.
FIFPro said it was publishing the video of the November 4 beating of Spartak Gogniev to spur the world governing body FIFA and European counterpart UEFA into action because the punitive measures leveled at Terek Grozny, the club responsible, were too mild.
FC Krasnodar captain Gogniev was hospitalized with a broken nose, a broken rib and concussion in the pitch-side attack during a reserve team game in Grozny, the capital of Russia’s southern republic of Chechnya.
Russian authorities fined Terek $16,000 and ordered the next two games to be played behind closed doors. To FIFPro's surprise, Gogniev was also fined, $1,600, and banned for six games, for pushing the referee and inciting the attack.
The incident was loaded with ethnic undertones, as Terek complained Gogniev had invited the beating by shouting racial slurs at the club’s representatives.
It gained international resonance after the Russian national football team was photographed in t-shirts bearing slogans in support of Gogniev.
The release of the video comes just hours after Russian Premier League chief Sergei Pryadkin vowed never to make it publicly available for fear of compromising an ongoing police investigation.
The footage, posted on YouTube, shows a group of six men approach Gogniev after he had been dismissed. One man, dressed in a dark leather jacket, appears to strike Gogniev in the face.
A melee ensues, with club officials and substitutes trying to break the two apart. Then a man in green camouflage overalls with a vest approaches Gogniev and throws two punches at him.
Onlookers charge into the ruckus, some attempting to restore order; others appearing to attack Gogniev, who is last seen raising his arms to protect his face as he disappears out of the frame.
FIFPro said he escaped into the players’ tunnel, where he was apprehended by another group of men in police attire who proceeded to beat him with batons.
“This incident and the way the Russian Federation has handled Gogniev’s case need to be discussed by the Executive Committees of both FIFA and UEFA,” FIFPro said in a website statement.
“FIFPro is still astonished by the ruling made by the Russian Federation (RFS) disciplinary committee in the Gogniev case,” the statement said. “The Russian Federation showed how little respect it has for players' rights.”
Terek Grozny has deep connections with the Kremlin.
The club's president until Monday was the Kremlin-installed Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, who has in the past called for Vladimir Putin to be the country's president for life.
Kadyrov inherited the post of club president from his father Akhmad Kadyrov, who was assassinated in 2004 in a bomb attack at Terek’s old stadium. Ramzan Kadyrov resigned as the club’s president on Monday.
Rights activists have accused Kadyrov of ignoring the law and running the province as his own personal fiefdom.
