Russian news agencies say prosecutors have asked for 17- and 18-month prison sentences for two soccer players whose beating of a government official at a Moscow coffee shop sparked wide outrage.
Prosecutors made the request May 6 in Moscow's Presnensky District Court, according to RIA Novosti and TASS, in the ongoing trial against Pavel Mamayev and Aleksandr Kokorin.
Kokorin, a striker with the Zenit St. Petersburg club, and Mamayev, a Krasnodar F.C. midfielder, were charged with battery and premeditated hooliganism in connection with the October 8 assault on Denis Pak.
The attack occurred after Pak, an ethnic Korean official from the Ministry for Industry and Trade, rebuked them for behaving improperly in a central Moscow coffee shop.
Two other people have also been charged, including Kokorin's younger brother.
Video taken by a surveillance camera and broadcast by national television stations showed Pak being hit over the head with a chair and slapped in the face.
The four men were also accused of beating Vitaly Solovchuk, a driver for television journalist Olga Ushakova, in a separate altercation near a Moscow hotel on the same day.
The attacks damaged the reputation of Russian soccer after the country's successful hosting of the 2018 World Cup months earlier.
