Manchester United captain Harry Maguire has offered his explanation to the BBC on Thursday that he was fearful for his life and thought he was being kidnapped as he was arrested by plainclothes police officers following a fracas on the Greek island of Mykonos.<\/p>\n
Maguire was found guilty of repeated bodily harm, attempted bribery, violence against public employees and insulting behavior after his arrest in a bar brawl during which two Hellenic police officers were assaulted. He was given a suspended prison sentence of 21 months and 10 days, but Manchester United said on Wednesday that Maguire had been granted a full retrial after appealing against the verdict.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was horrible. It\u2019s not something I ever want to do again. I don\u2019t wish it on anybody. It\u2019s the first time I\u2019d ever been inside a prison,\u201d Maguire said of his two nights in custody.<\/p>\n
Maguire also said his younger sister Daisy had been attacked in a bar on the island by two men who drugged her with an injection, adding that when he tried to take her to hospital he was subsequently arrested.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey just started hitting us. He was hitting my legs and saying my career is over, no more football, you won\u2019t play again,\u201d said Maguire, visibly shaken.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd at this point, I thought there\u2019s no chance that these are police, I don\u2019t know who they are, I tried to run away.\u201d<\/p>\n
Maguire\u2019s brother Joe and friend Christopher Sharman were also arrested and found guilty on various charges. Joe was found guilty of repeated bodily harm, violence against public employees and attempted bribery while Sharman was found guilty of insult, repeated bodily harm and violence against public employees.<\/p>\n
Maguire\u2019s lawyer Alexis Anagnostakis informed the court during the trial that two men had approached Daisy, who fainted immediately after being injected with an unknown substance. The defendants asked to be driven to a hospital, but were instead taken to a police station, he added.<\/p>\n
A police witness for the prosecution told the court that Maguire attempted to bribe his way out of the situation. \u201cDo you know who I am? I am the captain of Manchester United, I am very rich, I can give you money, I can pay you, please let us go,\u201d the witness told the bench.<\/p>\n
Maguire denied trying to bribe the police involved in the incident.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have great faith in the Greek law, a retrial will give us more time to prepare, gather the evidence, allow witnesses into the court. I\u2019m really confident that the truth will be told and come out,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t feel like I owe an apology to anybody. An apology is something when you\u2019ve done something wrong. Do I regret \u2026 I regret being in the situation, obviously the situation has made it difficult. I play for one of the biggest clubs in the world so I regret putting the fans and the club through this.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sources told ESPN\u2019s Mark Ogden on Wednesday that Maguire has the backing of Manchester United manager Ole Gunnar Solskjaer and will retain the club captaincy.<\/p>\n
Credit: Football Tribe Malaysia<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Manchester United captain Harry Maguire has offered his explanation to the BBC on Thursday that he was fearful for his life and thought he was being kidnapped as he was arrested by plainclothes police officers following a fracas on the Greek island of Mykonos. Maguire was found guilty of repeated bodily harm, attempted bribery, violence against public employees and insulting behavior after his arrest in a bar brawl during which two Hellenic police officers were assaulted. He was given a suspended prison sentence of 21 months and 10 days, but Manchester United said on Wednesday that Maguire had been granted a full retrial after appealing against the verdict. \u201cIt was … Continue reading “Maguire on Mykonos arrest: I thought I was being kidnapped”<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":86,"featured_media":24057,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1639,1640],"tags":[1652,93,1868,95],"class_list":["post-24056","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-europe","category-european-leagues","tag-harry-maguire","tag-manchester-united","tag-ole-gunnar-solskjaer","tag-slider"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24056","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/86"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24056"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24056\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24058,"href":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24056\/revisions\/24058"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24057"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}