Hooligan strikes again

A German football hooligan convicted of savagely beating a French policeman at France '98 was involved in a brawl on Sunday after Germany lost to Brazil in the World Cup final, prosecutors said yesterday. A spokeswoman for the state prosecutor's office in Hanover said Markus Warnecke, who was released from jail in France in April after serving four years of a five-year sentence, was under investigation. Warnecke, 31, went on a drunken rampage with other German hooligans in June 1998 after failing to obtain tickets to the Germany-Yugoslavia World Cup match in Lens, northern France. Gendarme Daniel Nivel suffered permanent brain damage from the vicious attack and two other policemen were hurt. Warnecke, a tattoo shop owner with links to the German far right, said during the trial he had hit a policeman during the attack but did not admit to battering Nivel.