Serbia football hooligans chanted the name of Ratko Mladic and held up a banner proclaiming Kosovo as belonging to Serbia as they marched to Auguste Delaune Stadium for Thursday's friendly against France.
The group, numbering about 35-40 and including a small number of hooligans from French club Paris Saint-Germain, unfurled a banner reading ''Kosovo is Serbia,'' and chanted Mladic's name, all the while filming themselves. Two police cars followed, but the police did not intervene as the group lit flares and let off firecrackers.
The group was loudly jeered on one street by football fans who objected to the chants. This led to a brief standoff but there was no violence, despite a few of the fans breaking into chants of ''PSG, hooligan!'' and inviting a confrontation.
Once inside Reims' stadium, the same group of hooligans, some now bare-chested, again chanted Mladic's name shortly after the match started.
Mladic, the former Bosnian Serb military chief, is standing trial on charges of masterminding Serb atrocities throughout the 1992-95 Bosnian war.
Mladic faces 11 charges including two genocide counts for allegedly orchestrating massacres, illegal sniping and shelling by Serb forces under his command during the war that left 100,000 dead.
Until recently, PSG had a long-standing problem with football hooliganism and racism among some of its fans. One particularly violent far-right hooligan group was active for more than 20 years until measures were imposed to curb the problem two years ago.
