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June 30, 2010

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British Journalist Held For Staging England Dressing Room "Trespass"

A British tabloid journalist was arrested in South Africa after it was discovered that the incident in which an England fan entered the team's changing room was an "orchestrated" attempt to undermine World Cup security.

National police commissioner Bheki Cele said that police arrested the Sunday Mirror reporter Simon Wright for harboring Pavlos Joseph while police were searching for him.

Closed circuit television footage indicated Wright helped the 32-year-old Joseph get into the England locker room after its June 18 draw with Algeria. "The police have reason to believe this incident was orchestrated. The police believe the motive was to put the World Cup security in a bad light and possibly to profit from it," Cele said in Pretoria yesterday.

Wright interviewed Joseph at length for a post-match story in which he branded the England team a "disgrace" for its poor performance against lowly-ranked Algeria, only a few days after a disappointing 1-1 draw against the United States. In the article, he described how Joseph eyeballed the dejected players and told them: "That was woeful and not good enough".

Joseph's surprise appearance in the changing room also raised concerns about lax security at the tournament, the first in Africa.

"As South African police hunted high and low for Pavlos, unaware of his name and scouring CCTV for his face, the man at the center of it all was calmly sitting down to breakfast with the Sunday Mirror," Wright wrote in the article.




 

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