Two Germans were charged yesterday with attempted murder and assault after a savage attack on a French gendarme following Sunday's Germany-Yugoslavia World Cup match in the northern French town of Lens.
The Prosecutor, Mr Christian Roussel said Mr Markus Warnecke and Mr Karl-Heinz Elschner, both 27, each face up to 30 years in prison if convicted.
Mr Warnecke and Mr Elschner were among 15 people detained on Sunday after running street battles between neo-Nazi hooligans and police following the World Cup match between Germany and Yugoslavia.
Gendarme Daniel Nivel (43), a father of two, suffered severe brain and skull injuries when he was kicked and beaten and left lying in a pool of blood.
Police said the attackers laid into the gendarme before ripping off his helmet and cold-bloodedly smashing his head. Mr Nivel remained in a coma yesterday.
Doctors reserved a prognosis, but said he had suffered permanent brain damage. "His condition has not generally improved," Dr Alain Facon of Lille emergency services said, adding that surgery remained uncertain.
Mr Warnecke's lawyer meanwhile said his client was not a member of a neo-Nazi group and felt "dejected" by the turn of events.
Mr Warnecke, identified by witnesses, appeared in court yesterday with his left leg in a plaster cast following an injury while trying to escape arrest, the prosecution said.
He is the suspected ringleader of the group that set upon the gendarme, while Mr Elschner was one of seven Germans about to be summarily deported when he was identified by a witness to the attack. The other six Germans have been expelled.
Mr Roussel said Mr Nivel and several other gendarmes were attacked by a group of "four or five" hooligans.
He said that although the suspects denied their part, "several witness accounts are precise and it is up to the investigating judge to determine the role each of them played in this act."
It was not clear if Mr Warnecke, from Hanover in central Germany where he owns a clothes and tattoo shop, and Mr Elschner, from nearby Braunschweig, knew each other.
Mr Warnecke has two previous convictions in Germany for wounding and one for fraud, and is currently under investigation for another wounding. His shop was vandalised on Monday.
Meanwhile three other Germans were sentenced to one year in prison each by the court in Bethune for violence relating to the incidents in Lens.
In the town of Lens itself, the mayor, Mr Andre Delelis, deplored a lack of co-operation between French and German police, and praised the work done by British and French police acting together.
In the western town of Nantes, where Chile and Cameroon were playing yesterday, police arrested two Germans near the city's stadium armed with a baseball bat and sporting neo-Nazi insignia.