News.Scotland.Org

Scotland, Oct 4: Celtic park faced a tensed moment last night as a jubilant and excited fan of Celtic football team entered the pitch and apparently attacked the AC Milan goalkeeper, Nelson Dida . This incident is expected to hurt the Celtic’s 2-1 win in their Champions League match in Glasgow. This victory of Celtic team was considered as a revenge to their defeat to the champions in the last 16 match in the previous season, unfortunately they have to face the grunt of UEFA, football’s governing body, this includes the deduction of points or expulsion from the competition.

The dramatic incident took place as the match entered the 90^th minute, tensions were running high at Celtic Park as the hosts battled for their first victory in the group stage of the competition. Mc Donald of Celtic team had just scored a goal to make the score 2-1, it was at this point of time a jubilant fan entered the pitch from the Celtic end across Dida’s path near the goalpost, before making contact with him.

The 33 year old goal keeper collapsed on the ground grasping his face soon after the attack. The medical staff rushed to the spot and attended the Brazilian, later he was taken out of the ground in a stretcher. There are mixed response over this incident, some witness say Dida was ‘caught around the throat’, while others say he was ’stroked across the chest’.

After attacking Dida the excited fan made an attempt to join the Celtic team who had gathered in a corner of the ground to celebrate the goal. The game continued soon after Dida was replaced by a substitute. Carlo Ancelotti, the coach of AC Milan said: “I don’t think the injury is serious.”

While commenting on this incident Strathclyde Police said: “We are investigating the incident, but no one had been detained yet.”

In a similar incident earlier, Dida was hurt by a flare during the Champions League quarter-final between AC Milan and Inter Milan. That game was abandoned and UEFA awarded a 5-0 aggregate victory to AC Milan, who reached the semi-finals. Inter Milan were fined £132,000 and had to play four European games behind closed doors.

The president of the Celtic Supporters’ Affiliation, Peter Rafferty, said: “We are disappointed to have our elation at the result turned into something like this”. The manager of the Celtic football team, Gordon Strachan, declined to comment on this incident. William Gaillard, director of communication, UEFA, said that they are looking for the reports from the referee and match delegate before taking further action.

Its bad time for Celtic team, their hard earned victory is spoiled by the over excitement of a fan.

October, 4

In order to curb the growing wildlife crimes in Scotland, the Inspector of Prosecution in Scotland will look thoroughly all aspects of the cases relating to animal crimes. In an eye-raising statistics released by government about 141 wildlife crimes were reported during 2002-03 compared to sudden high, 275 cases in 2006-07. These figures are a matter of concern for the government which has to be checked soon.

According to the Scottish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SSPCA), these figures are just one side of this brutal crime. The actual figures are far higher which goes un-noticed. As per the figures of SSPCA about 600 cases of animal cruelty and needless slaughter has been traced. One of the spokeswoman of SSPCA said the scale of such crime is wide and is keeping on expanding with time, so sudden measures is the need of the hour.

Further adding she said the area of such wildlife crimes is vast and it covers every single harm one does to these innocent creatures. It could be deer attack, bird poisoning, frog torture, traps injuring animals, and many other. The rate of such crimes have risen steadily in recent years, the bird crimes, poaching and salmon fishing have gone up immensely.

In the spur of such crimes now some rarest animal crime rates have also marched up, the badger baiting was an alien crime few years back. But now this crime has been reported frequently in last year. Above all that the slaughter of Scotland’s birds of prey is at a high level in past twenty years. Such brutal acts done to animals have triggered an alarm for the authorities to take some steps to combat this injustice done to wildlife.

The main reason for the increase in such crimes at a gradual pace is the poor conviction rate for these crimes. It is noticed that only around 1.4 percent of bird poisonings cases end in a conviction. It is heard that in order to check such crimes the inspectorate is looking to come up with a raft of recommendations to give a push to the conviction rates. Meanwhile the police officials stated that the reason behind lack of such crimes ending in conviction is due to the deficiency of appropriate evidences backing up the conviction.

Taking a step forward to curb these crimes, the Crown office has taken measures to tackle the situation, by introducing prosecutors to upgrade the way these crimes are handled. Even the police have been given extra power to detain any suspect they find in wildlife crimes under the Nature Conservation Act 2004.

The drawback of these cases is the way people are caught, and then released so easily even on serious crimes. This itself point out the fact why only a few gets the actual punishments for such inhuman acts. Ethically for killing birds of prey there is a punishment of six months in jail and a fine of £10,000. But still the crime rates are not slowing down, it seems people have taken these wildlife crimes for granted. Now this issue is taking shape into a serious concern which needs a sudden check or else the day is not far when Scotland’s vast wildlife heritage will be left only in history books and museums.