Twenty years on, Leeds still haunted by murder of two fans in Istanbul
Darkest night will never be forgotten despite virus crisis preventing tributes today, writes
Today’s 20th anniversary of the murders of Leeds United fans Kevin Speight and Chris Loftus in Istanbul would have been observed, like the previous 19, by the laying of flowers beneath the modest brass plaque honouring their lives and at the feet of the adjacent statue of Billy Bremner on Elland Road. The coronavirus lockdown may have frustrated that poignant tradition but everyone who remembers the darkest night in the club’s history will mark the day, commemorating two men who were unknown to the majority of them yet will never be forgotten.
The first leg of Leeds’s Uefa Cup semi-final against Galatasaray was supposed to be a joyous affair. It was their first in European competition for a quarter of a century and David O’Leary’s vibrant young side and their followers had endured an arduous and expensive campaign. Since early September, they had visited Heerenveen to play Partizan Belgrade on neutral territory, been twice to Moscow to face Lokomotiv and Spartak, played Roma at the Stadio Olimpico and had a quarter-final in Prague against Slavia. A thousand fans had made the trip and, on the eve of the game, about 150 of them were drinking in Taksim Square.
Galatasaray supporters’ reputation for particularly bloodthirsty intimidation at Ataturk Airport and at their Ali Sami Yen stadium had been indulgently glorified for years. Uefa had simply acquiesced that in Istanbul that was how it was.
“I first went there for a friendly at the age of 17 so I knew what to expect,” O’Leary says. “It’s strange because, in general, Turkish people are lovely and look after you so well but when you fly in or get to the ground with a football team, you can’t believe how hostile it is. Our reception when we got there with Leeds was nothing different to what I’d experienced before with Arsenal and Ireland.”
The four Loftus brothers, Chris, Darren, Phil and Andy, had flown in with the squad on the club’s chartered flight. Speight, a 40-year-old publican, arrived a little later but walked through the terminal chatting to teenage striker Alan Smith. Both victims were among those who checked into their hotels and immediately headed to the bars of Taksim. Neither had any history of lairiness or troublemaking.
They drank at first at the James Joyce Irish Pub. There was singing, certainly, and no doubt a few among the 150 had too much to drink, but subsequent stories cited in defence of those convicted of the killings, claiming provocation by someone showing disrespect to Turkish bank notes, the flag or the waitresses, are unfounded. Those who were there insist nothing of the kind happened. Although much was made of the cultural clash between fans and locals, this was supposedly liberal Taksim, not the courtyard of the Blue Mosque.
Loftus and Speight were among a group of around 20 who peeled away to another bar. They were stalked by a spotter and at 10.30pm were attacked by a gang of 100 men, some of whom were brandishing carving knives, others machetes, bats and scaffold poles. Loftus was fatally stabbed and his brother Darren beaten by his assailants and the police, who appeared during the ambush, as he tried to tend to him.
The police did not spare the good Samaritan administering mouth-tomouth to Loftus, striking him repeatedly round the head with their nightsticks. Speight was slashed across the abdomen and the two were bundled into taxis by their distraught friends and taken along with the wounded to Taksim Hospital. Loftus was pronounced dead shortly after the Leeds chairman, Peter Ridsdale, arrived and Speight died in the operating theatre. The blood supplies Ridsdale had been forced to source and pay for from a better-equipped hospital could not save him.
Ridsdale had raced to help after being informed at Uefa’s pre-match gala dinner and earned the eternal gratitude of the families for his compassion and support. At a predawn meeting, he was told by the governing body that the match had to proceed, on pain of a 3-0 default, and reluctantly conceded his approval.
“It wasn’t until breakfast on the morning of the game that I was told people had lost their lives,” O’Leary says. “Because the game was late in the evening, it was a long time to dwell on it and by the time of the team meeting at the hotel, I could just tell with my young team that their minds were in a different place. I was thinking how needless the game was and because I wasn’t focused on it and couldn’t get them to focus, I remember thinking I’d failed them.
“Going into that stadium that night was like going into a war zone,” he says, recalling the missiles thrown at the team coach, the throat-slitting gestures from men in cars and on mopeds, wearing scarves as masks, and the police’s riot shields that were deployed to protect his team, while simultaneously spooking them further. The hosts had refused Leeds’s requests for a minute’s silence or for their own players to wear black armbands, prompting the 300 away supporters in the stadium to turn their backs in protest. Leeds lost 2-0, wilting in a cacophony of booing and unyielding aggression, and could not overturn that deficit in the return leg.
“Everything fell into perspective,” O’Leary says about the scarf-strewn tributes at Elland Road the following morning, where he placed his bouquet after a late flight home. “No one cares about football or matches then, there was just a tremendous feeling of disappointment, such grief. The memory up here and the sadness are still unbelievably raw.”
After exhausting numerous appeals procedures, the four men convicted in 2001 of involvement in the murders were not finally jailed until 2010, the longest sentence handed down was a mere 10 years and all have been free for a number of years. During the West Yorkshire Coroner’s inquests in 2004, which returned verdicts of unlawful killing, David Hinchliff severely criticised the conduct of the Turkish police. He described the force, which refused to cooperate with West Yorkshire officers, as “disorganised, uncoordinated, not in control of the situation and ill-prepared. The police seem to be out of control, and their ability was described by witnesses as being diabolical.”
The statue of Billy Bremner cannot be a shrine this year. But when a semblance of normality resumes, there would be no more fitting place to congregate. Don Revie’s captain died cruelly early in 1997 at the age of 54 and his loss is still keenly felt. “People have said to me,” he once pointed out, “‘You must have played hard for the manager’. But the answer is yes and no. I played hard for me and for the fans. I was always very conscious of the fans.” Leeds supporters are forever conscious of the two who went to Istanbul and did not make it home.
‘I wasn’t focused on a game that was needless and couldn’t get the team to focus’