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23rd February 2024
02:39pm GMT
Queens Park Rangers star Ilias Chair has been handed a 12-month prison sentence in Belgium for fracturing a truck driver's skull.
Chair, who has made 31 appearances for the Championship club this season, was given his sentence with a 12-month suspended sentence and was also ordered to pay the victim £13,400 on Friday morning.
The midfielder has been one of the most important players for QPR since breaking into the first team in 2017, making 222 appearances for the London club.
He's scored five times and registered four assists as QPR battle to avoid the drop.
They will now be without one of their key men after he injured the truck driver while on a kayaking trip four years ago.
QPR have also released a club statement in which they said they will make no further comment as "the legal proceeding is yet to reach its conclusion".
It 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."
In Chair's hometown of Antwerp, it was heard that he, his brother Jabeur and a group of friends had an argument with the driver in Bazeilles, France, in the summer of 2020.
Jabeur was handed a six-month suspended sentence and a £700 fine.
All those involved were waiting for a bus back to Belgium after the trip, with Antwerp's public prosecutor telling a January hearing: "The consequences were dramatic for Niels T [the driver]. 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."
Last month, the court heard that woman in a green bikini lashed out, "hitting, scratching and biting" as she demanded to be the first person to board the bus.
"This led to a discussion with other people who were waiting, including the later victims, Niels T, his sister Eline T and Dries D," the prosecutor continued.
"The woman in the green bikini behaved very aggressively and things quickly escalated. the hand. The woman lashed out at the victims and their children."
As a result, a major brawl that broke out in which an individual, believed to be Chair, threw a rock at Niels T, who lost consciousness.
He has denied all allegations and demanded a re-trial, with new lawyers.
Niels T's lawyer 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."
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