Minister of the Interior Davor Bozinovic said on Sunday that the investigation into fans of the Split-based Hajduk football club who caused riots and clashed with the police at a rest area on the Zagreb-Split motorway on 21 May was nearing completion.

“The national police chief has told me that the police conduct and the forms of coercion used were in line with the law and professional rules in high-risk situations such as this one,” Bozinovic said in an interview with the RTL broadcaster on Sunday.

He noted that the clashes did not occur between rival fan groups but between a football club’s supporters and police, adding that police were at the site to ensure a peaceful passage to Split for Hajduk supporters.

Organiser assumes most responsibility

Asked if it was true that police made Hajduk supporters stay in their cars and would not give them water or let them use the toilet, the minister said that he did not know that and that that was not the job of the police.

Sports clubs as organisers of matches have the most responsibility and they should cooperate with one another, notably in cases of high-risk matches, he said.

“If they do not cooperate, the police will have to be in charge of more and more aspects. Dinamo, Hajduk, Rijeka and Osijek should cooperate on the organisation of matches,” he said.

Asked if the law on preventing riots at sporting events should be amended, Bozinovic said that if a debate would help, he did not see why it should not be changed.

“We believe the legislative framework is satisfactory but that it is not implemented. If 500 sports fans travel from one city to another, the visiting club should provide for order. That is not happening,” he said, among other things.

Asked if police had made unselective arrests at the Desinec rest area, Bozinovic said that should be left to investigators to determine.

After Saturday’s match, in which the Zagreb-based Dinamo beat Hajduk 3-1, winning this year’s national championship, several hundred Hajduk supporters, who were being transported in buses, vans and private cars, abruptly stopped at the Desinec rest area on the Zagreb-Split motorway and violently turned against police who were escorting them. The police then fired warning shots, and four fans sustained shotgun wounds. Several rioting fans, as well as police officers, sustained injuries.