ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Manchester United defender Harry Maguire was given a 15-month suspended sentence Wednesday over a nightclub scuffle involving police officers on the Greek island of Mykonos in August 2020, court officials said.
Lawyers for the plaintiffs called on Maguire’s club and the English FA to sanction the player.
The England international originally was handed a 21-month suspended sentence shortly after the incident, but he appealed the ruling, which triggered a new trial at a court on the island of Syros, the region’s administrative capital.
The appeals trial had been delayed several times, including once because of a lawyers’ strike.
Maguire, who turns 33 on Thursday, was convicted on charges of causing minor bodily harm, insulting police officers, attempted bribery, and unlawful violence against police officers.
The sentence was suspended for three years.
Maguire can challenge Wednesday’s decision at Greece’s Supreme Court in Athens.
The center-back, who was not present at the trial Wednesday, has denied wrongdoing. In 2020, he said: “If anything, myself, family, and friends are the victims.”
But a lawyer representing police officers involved in the 2020 incident accused Maguire of displaying arrogance and a lack of remorse.
“He has never apologized — not even once. Not a single apology,” lawyer Ioannis Paradissis told The Associated Press on Wednesday. “As of today, he has a criminal record.
“We hope that his club and the Football Association of England take action against him,” he added. “How is it possible for someone who now has a criminal record and has been convicted of acts of violence against police officers to continue to participate in national teams and in the England team? It's unacceptable.”
Paradissis also issued a statement on behalf of the police officers, who had hoped for an apology as “an elementary gesture of respect.”
“It is incompatible with the values of sport, and with the role-model status that elite athletes are expected to embody, for a person with a criminal record for violence to continue to appear as a Premier League player and as a public figure looked up to by young fans across the world,” it added.
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Manchester United's Harry Maguire clears the ball during the Premier League soccer match between Manchester United and Everton in Liverpool, England, Monday, Feb. 23, 2026. (AP Photo/Ian Hodgson)
Manchester United's Harry Maguire reacts during the Premiier League soccer match between Manchester United and Crystal Palace in Manchester, England, Sunday, March 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Dave Thompson)
BEIRUT (AP) — Israel's military issued warnings to residents of dozens of border villages in southern Lebanon to evacuate “immediately” Wednesday as airstrikes on suburbs of Beirut intensified and Hezbollah claimed more attacks.
Lebanon was dragged into the broader war in the Middle East early Monday when Hezbollah fired rockets and drones into northern Israel, triggering Israeli retaliatory airstrikes that killed more than 70 people, wounded more than 400 and displaced tens of thousands of people from southern Lebanon, the eastern Bekaa Valley and Beirut’s southern suburbs.
The ongoing conflict is not the first between Hezbollah and Israel. Hezbollah began firing into Israel a day after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on southern Israel triggered the war in Gaza. After months of low-level fighting, a full-scale war erupted in September 2024 and Israel later launched a ground invasion of Lebanon.
Israeli forces withdrew from most of southern Lebanon after a U.S.-brokered ceasefire halted the fighting in late 2024, but continued to occupy five points on the Lebanese side of the border. Israel also pressed on with near-daily strikes, primarily in southern Lebanon, saying that Hezbollah has been trying to rebuild its positions there, killing nearly 400 people while the ceasefire was in place.
Hezbollah Secretary-General Naim Kassem says the group had no choice but to fire rockets because of this. “As long as the occupation is present, then the resistance and its weapons are a legitimate right,” Kassem said in his first speech since this latest escalation.
Kassem slammed the Lebanese government's criticism of Hezbollah's rocket fire and its commitment to disarm the group, claiming that Israel cannot stop its attacks through diplomatic means alone.
“Why did you make a big deal out of this salvo of rockets? The reason is the ongoing aggression,” he said.
The Israeli military issued a statement Wednesday telling people living in dozens of villages in southern Lebanon close to the border with Israel to evacuate and move “immediately” north of the Litani River.
The Israeli army’s Arabic spokesperson warned on X that if people decide to move south of the river, they will be endangering their lives.
The area south of the Litani River, about 8% of the territory of Lebanon, is mostly along the border with Israel. The Lebanese government says it has cleared the area of Hezbollah’s military presence there over the past months.
The order came after airstrikes overnight on the predominantly Christian southeastern suburb of Hazmieh that struck a hotel. Others hit the towns of Aramoun and Saadiyat just south of Beirut’s international airport, killing six and wounding eight. Another strike hit the eastern city of Baalbek, killing six people and wounding 15, according to state media.
The four airstrikes came without a warning in advance, which usually implies targeted assassinations. Security officials speaking on condition of anonymity in line with regulations said the man targeted in Hazmieh was a local official in Beirut’s southern suburb of Ghobeiri, and that the official was wounded.
“We live in a country where a missile can fall on your head at any moment,” said Maggie Shibli, wife of the owner of the Hotel Comfort in a Hazmieh neighborhood that was struck early Wednesday.
Abbas Najdeh, who was displaced from the southern port city of Tyre and was staying at the hotel, said: “We were sleeping then suddenly I, my children and my wife were thrown" by the blast.
Also Wednesday, the Israeli military issued several warnings to people to evacuate buildings in Beirut’s southern suburbs, which were struck shortly afterward.
Hezbollah said Wednesday that it carried out several attacks on Israel, including two in which the group claimed that it used precision-guided missiles.
The warning for people to leave the area south of the Litani River came a day after Israel sent additional troops into southern Lebanon. Israeli forces had already been occupying several border points in Lebanon since the November 2024 cease-fire ended the previous Israel-Hezbollah war.
It was not immediately clear if Israel was preparing for a wider ground invasion. Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reported Israeli artillery shelling on several Lebanese villages along the border, including Aid al-Shaab and Beit Lif.
The Lebanese military in a statement that it arrested 27 people for “illegally possessing weapons and munitions," and that it had redeployed some forces in the south and further to the east along the border with Syria. It did not say whether the 26 Lebanese and one Palestinian apprehended were affiliated with Hezbollah or other militant groups.
The cash-strapped army's move comes after Prime Minister Nawaf Salam's government and President Joseph Aoun urged state security agencies to pursue people firing rockets from Lebanon, as part of their broader policy of asserting the government's full sovereignty over the country, while also criticizing Israel's strikes and ground movements.
In eastern Lebanon, the main border crossing with Syria was briefly closed Wednesday after Lebanese officials received a warning of an impending Israeli strike, which officials later said turned out to be a false alarm.
Anxieties have also been running high in Lebanon in recent days over a buildup of Syrian forces on the border. The current Syrian government is hostile to Iran and Hezbollah, as they were on opposite sides of Syria's civil war that ended with the ouster of former President Bashar Assad in December 2024.
A high-ranking Syrian official told The Associated Press on Wednesday that the troop buildup was “purely defensive” and to “prevent smuggling and counter any unforeseen scenario.” The official spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to comment publicly.
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Associated Press writer Abby Sewell in Beirut contributed to this report.
In this photo taken with a slow shutter speed, a Middle East Airlines plane flies over Dahiyeh in Beirut's southern suburbs, which remains in darkness following Israeli airstrikes, Lebanon, Wednesday, March 4, 2026. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
Tracer rounds light the sky as people fire live rounds into the air during a televised speech by Hezbollah leader Naim Kassem in Dahiyeh, Beirut's southern suburbs, Lebanon, Wednesday, March 4, 2026. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
Displaced people fleeing Israeli strikes in southern Lebanon sit in traffic at a highway that links to Beirut, in the southern port city of Sidon, Monday, March 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Mohammed Zaatari)
People pass in front of a damaged hotel that was hit by an Israeli airstrike in Hazmieh east of Beirut, Lebanon, Wednesday, March 4, 2026. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
Displaced people fleeing Israeli strikes in southern Lebanon sit on a pickup at a highway that links to Beirut, in the southern port city of Sidon, Monday, March 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Mohammed Zaatari)
A Lebanese soldier passes in front of a damaged hotel that was hit by an Israeli airstrike in Hazmieh, east of Beirut, Lebanon, Wednesday, March 4, 2026. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
Israeli tanks maneuver near the Israel-Lebanon border, in northern Israel, Wednesday, March 4, 2026. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)
Smoke rises following an Israeli airstrike in Dahiyeh, Beirut's southern suburb, near Rafik Hariri International Airport, Lebanon, Wednesday, March 4, 2026. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)
