Two men sentenced to prison for wearing Spanish football shirts with controversial numbers

Two men, aged 26 and 40, are given seven days in prison for wearing Spanish football shirts with numbers 26 and 62 in prison.

Some may remember the national football team’s painful defeat to Spain in the 1980s and may have fantasized about prison sentences for Emilio Butragueno and all the others who put an end to the Danish dreams of gold at the European Championship and World Cup.

However, it was a completely different reason that led to prison sentences on Monday against two men, who are now being punished for wearing Spanish national team jerseys in Storstrøm Prison last year.

These are two men, aged 26 and 40, who have been sentenced to seven days in prison each for wearing Spanish national team jerseys with the numbers 26 and 62.

The men have been convicted of violating the ban on continuing a banned association – in this case the biker group Bandidos, which is temporarily banned while a case is pending in the courts to dissolve the biker group.

The verdict against the two men was handed down on Monday at the Court in Nykøbing Falster.

According to the court, the men should know that red shirts with yellow details and those numbers have close ties to the biker group Bandidos and can therefore be considered a way to show allegiance to the banned group.

Only the 26-year-old appeared in court, and he explained that his jersey with number 26 had a completely different, but very special reason.

“That number is very special to me, and marks an anniversary. I proposed to my fiancée on October 26, 2020, and that’s why my jersey has that number. It has nothing to do with Bandidos,” he says.

He also says that neither he, nor any of the others he knows from the Bandidos, are aware of the use of the numbers 26 and 62 as a connection symbol.

The prosecution in the case says that the numbers are used as substitutes for the corresponding letters of the alphabet, and therefore can be translated into the words ‘Bandidos Forever’ for number 26 and ‘Forever Bandidos’ for number 62.

During his presentation of the case, he says that Bandidos in the USA and Germany use the colors red and yellow as their distinguishing features, and that ‘2662’ is used by the two groups as an alternative to the slogan ‘Bandidos Forever Forever Bandidos (BFFB)’.

Something the defendant didn’t think he knew anything about.

He and the 40-year-old man’s defense attorney believe they cannot be punished since the shirts were delivered to them by prison staff.

“I saw Spain win the European Championship on TV and wanted a Spanish shirt. My fiancé ordered it for me with number 26 and handed it to the staff, who passed it on to me,” he says.

He claims that the shirt had been approved and that he therefore had every right to wear the shirt.

That was until one of the employees jumped to see two men standing next to each other in red and yellow jerseys with the numbers 26 and 62, which made it look like the designation 2662.

The court did not buy the 26-year-old’s explanation, confiscated the shirts and sentenced them both to seven days in prison.

ritzau