QPR respond to claims star has been jailed for alleged attack on truck driver
Queens Park Rangers have responded to claims that forward Ilias Chair has been sent to prison after he was allegedly found guilty of breaking a truck driver's skull with a rock.
Chair, 26, was reportedly sentenced him to a year in jail, with a further 12 months suspended, on Friday morning at a court in his hometown of Antwerp. The Belgian-born Morocco international is also said to have been ordered to pay his alleged victim £13,400 compensation for their injuries.
Championship strugglers QPR said: "The club are, and have been, in regular contact with Ilias Chair's legal team regarding a charge of assault which has been made against him. The legal proceeding is yet to reach its conclusion. As such, the club will be making no further comment at this stage."
The trial heard that in Bazeilles, northern France, during the summer of 2020, Chair, his brother, Jaber, and their friends got into an argument with the truck driver. They and the driver, who has been named as Niels T, had been waiting for a bus back to Belgium following a kayaking trip.
In January, Antwerp's public prosecutor told a hearing: "According to many people involved, Ilias Chair lashed out at Niels T with a stone and knocked him unconscious. The consequences were dramatic for Niels T.
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"He suffered a severe skull fracture, two centimetres long, and was taken to hospital at Reims in critical condition. Afterwards he had to recover for a long time in a Belgian hospital, and could not do his job as a lorry driver for a long time. The blow was almost fatal for him, and he still feels the after-effects."
The lawyer for Niels T said: "My client almost lost his life, and it took surgeons to save him. He was unable to work for a long time, and still suffers adverse reactions every day to having been hit with a rock."
Chair has continued to feature for QPR and scored a winning goal for them on Saturday, as Marti Cifuentes' side beat Bristol City 1-0 away from home. The London club are still in the Championship relegation zone, one point from safety with 13 games remaining.
Ilias Chair is a key player for relegation-threatened QPR (Dylan Hepworth/MB Media/Getty Images)Capped 13 times by Morocco, Chair - who's eligible to represent the African nation through his parents - was part of their squad for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. The 26-year-old now boasts more than 200 first-team appearances for QPR, having been signed from Belgian side Lierse in 2016.
A half-season loan spell with Stevenage during the 2018-19 campaign first earned him acclaim in English football. Reports claim that in January, QPR rejected a £4.25million transfer bid for Chair from Turkish club Trabzonspor.
Speaking to Football League World before the January transfer window opened, the forward declared that he was "100 per cent" committed to QPR, adding: "I owe this club a lot of things, the least I can do is concentrate on every game and every training session I have for QPR.
"If anything ever came about then that is the time to think about that. Right now, it's just about QPR. It's about getting the best out of myself and getting the best out of this team."
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