Daspo for fans who provoke opponents by creating a climate of hatred

Adaspo fan who, even if only by words, provokes and threatens the opposing fans is at risk. The stadium ban can be triggered regardless ofactive participation in clashes.

The Court of Cassation  thus dismissed a supporter's appeal against the police commissioner's order prohibiting him from entering thestadium and imposing an obligation to report to the police at sporting events half an hour before and half an hour after the matches of his favourite team. Unsuccessfully, the defence had denied active participation in the scuffles between opposing fans. According to the judges, in fact, the restriction, which affects personal freedom, was justified by the conduct of the supporter of the local club, which constituted an obvious provocation 'towards the opposing fans and was such,' reads the judgement, 'as to provoke reactions capable of triggering episodes of violence and to engender and strengthen in the fans (own and opposing) feelings of hatred, of revenge and incitement to violence, being therefore objectively capable of endangering public safety or creating disturbances of public order'.

The decision by the Supreme Court has a precedent in the Tar Toscana verdict of 2023. At that time, the subject of a Daspo was a Fiorentina fan who, at the end of a Fiorentina- Juventus football match,  had gone under the opponent's section with a Liverpool shirt and scarf. A gesture, in the Questore's opinion, provocative because of the recall of the Heysel massacre in which 39 Juventus fans had died. Hence the supposed danger to public order and safety, which had justified the Daspo.

At that time, the administrative judges had specified that the ban, in view of the preventive purpose that characterises it, 'can be imposed by the administrative authority not only in the case of an ascertained offence, with a view to penal repression, but also in the case of a danger of harm to public order, in an evident preventive perspective, as in the case of conduct that entails or facilitates situations of "alarm" or "danger"'.

For the TAR, the purple fan had committed a particularly hateful and highly provocative action against the Juventus fans.