Japanese deport suspected English football hooligans

World Cup: Long-planned security operation swings into action against potential troublemakers as Beckham-mania sweeps host nations

Japan's campaign against World Cup violence began yesterday when two Britons were deported because one was suspected of being a hooligan.

James Rayment, 34, from Banbury, Oxfordshire was detained at Narita airport, Tokyo, after arriving on a Turkish Airlines flight from Istanbul, according to immigration officials. His name was on a list of potential troublemakers based on information supplied by the British police.

The other man, also 34, who was not named, was refused entry because immigration officials did not believe he was travelling only as a tourist. The two were "physically restrained", according to the report, and were due to have been sent back to Istanbul on the return flight that left yesterday afternoon.

Police sources said Mr Rayment was arrested and deported from an England game against Holland in 1993.

The first England fan to be turned away from this World Cup, Andrew Cooper, 37, a Derby County supporter, was sent back to Germany last week after being refused entry to South Korea. He also was not subject to a banning order but had been sentenced to four months' jail in 1999 for possessing CS gas.

Yesterday marked the first time that Japan's painstaking precautions against hooligan infiltration were put to the test. The failure to discriminate between suspected hooligans and those thought to be their friends suggests the desperation of the authorities to eliminate any possibility of trouble, even at the risk of sending home innocent people.

While the two men were being held in a detention room yesterday, a group of 30 police "spies" from Britain and Germany arrived to begin their World Cup duties. The so-called spotters specialise in anti-hooligan policing and will be on duty at half a dozen airports to identify potential troublemakers before they get into sensitive matches.

They were led by Ron Hogg, Assistant Chief Constable of Durham, who is leading the British police's World Cup operation. "We know 7,000 fans have bought tickets and we have checked all of them for criminal records," he said on arrival at Narita. "We know of only 11 who do and we have passed this information on to the Japanese police."

The 11 are among 349 other hooligan "risks" who may try to enter Japan for the tournament, and whose details have been passed to Japan's National Police Agency. Of those, 197 will be denied entry if they land in Japan, while 152 will be subject to what are suggestively referred to as "intensive immigration checks".

The police operation being put into action this week is the fruit of more than two years' planning among police in Europe, Japan and Korea.

Police in the two host countries, as well as in Britain, have set up 24-hour co-ordination centres for sharing intelligence about the movements of potential hooligans. Mr Hogg will work with the National Police Agency in central Tokyo. "It certainly does have a bit of a deterrent effect, the fact that we are here," Mr Hogg said. "I'm very confident that a lot of co-operation is there and if we can maintain that ... I'm sure we can prevent any real disorder."

In the run-up to the World Cup, which opens in Seoul on Friday, the Japanese police have moved to what is virtually a war footing, with almost weekly "anti-hooligan training" in football stadiums all over the country. Trepidation has reached near-hysterical levels, with some hotels and inns turning away foreigners.

Yesterday 650 riot police and 90 vehicles arrived by ferry on the northern island of Hokkaido, where England will play Argentina on 7 June in a tensely awaited match.

During the 1998 World Cup in France, Mr Rayment, a bricklayer and Queens Park Rangers fan, travelled to the tournament on a bicycle with a trailer bearing the flag of St George. He rode more than 1,000 miles, clocking up 88 miles a day for two weeks from the Hook of Holland, through Belgium and Luxembourg, Germany, the Swiss Alps and Italy and into France in time for England's first match in Marseilles. He did not have a ticket and denied he was a hooligan.

* Two football supporters accused of taking part in last month's riots at Millwall have been barred from every pub in Britain during the World Cup.

Appearing at the Old Bailey charged with rioting, Graham Wilfort, 31, and Andrew Best, 32 were given bail on condition they do not enter any on-licence premises until the tournament is over. The pair are said to have been involved in the violence that marred the First Division side's play-off defeat against Birmingham City at Millwall's ground, the New Den.

Defence lawyers failed to have the order reworded so the ban was effective only when matches were being played.