The first group of ten men placed under arrest for causing riots and clashing with the police at the Desinec rest area along the Zagreb-Split motorway were on Monday remanded in one month's custody.

The County Court in Velika Gorica is expected to make a decision on keeping the rest of the arrested football fans in custody during the day.

The court’s spokeswoman, Kornelija Kallay-Blazekovic, told the press that all ten men had been remanded in custody due to the risk of repeating the crime.

After the Saturday’s clash between fans of the Split-based football club Hajduk and the police, 44 Hajduk fans were placed under arrest, and the prosecution is charging them with causing riots, which is punishable with six months to five years in prison.

They arrive before the court in Velika Gorica in groups, and the investigating judge is expected to hear the last group after 5 p.m.

The first group which was detained in Remetinec after being interrogated at the prosecutor’s office and a court hearing consists of young men born between 1998 and 2002, and the prosecution is suspecting them of riots in which lives and property were endangered.

One of them had been previously convicted of similar acts with elements of violence, while eight of them do not have criminal records, the court’s spokeswoman said.

The lawyers of some of the suspects said that their defendants completely dismissed the charges. They also announced appeals against the decision of the investigative judge.

After the Saturday’s match, in which the Zagreb-based Dinamo beat Hajduk 3-1, winning this year’s national championship, several hundreds of Hajduk supporters, who were being transported in buses, vans and personal cars, abruptly stopped at the Desinec rest area and violently turned against 16 police officers, using among other things torches. The police then fired warning shots, and four fans sustained shotgun wounds. Several rioting fans, as well as police officers, sustained injuries.