The attack
Taton had traveled from France to Belgrade to support Toulouse FC in a UEFA Europa League match against Partizan. Hours before the match on September 17, a group of Partizan supporters carried out a planned attack on French fans in central Belgrade.
Taton suffered catastrophic injuries during the assault and remained hospitalized. He died on September 29, twelve days after the attack. Contemporary court reporting described the prosecution as a group-liability case: the proceedings did not depend on proving that one single defendant personally caused every fatal injury.
The 2011 convictions
In January 2011, Belgrade's High Court convicted twelve defendants of aggravated murder and two others of violent behavior. The first-instance prison terms ranged from four to 35 years. Đorđe Prelić and Dejan Puzigaća, accused of leading roles, were tried in absentia because they were fugitives.
The judgment established criminal responsibility for the coordinated attack, but it was not the end of the procedural history. Appeals focused both on the legal findings and on the severity of individual sentences.
The 2012 appeal
On January 26, 2012, the Belgrade Court of Appeal reduced many of the sentences. Prelić's in-absentia term was reduced from 35 to 15 years and Puzigaća's from 32 to 14. Ljubomir Marković and Ivan Grković, initially sentenced to 30 years each, received 13-year terms. Other defendants' sentences were also reduced.
The appellate court said the lower court had correctly considered the facts but had not given enough weight to mitigating circumstances when fixing punishment. The murder convictions therefore remained, even as the length of the prison terms changed.
Later proceedings for Đorđe Prelić
Prelić was arrested years later and extradited to Serbia. Because his earlier conviction had been entered while he was absent, he obtained a new trial rather than simply serving the in-absentia sentence.
In the retrial, the court found that Prelić participated in the attack but did not accept the earlier characterization of him as its organizer. He received 12 years, and the Court of Appeal later reduced that sentence to 10 years, the minimum term reported for the aggravated-murder offense of which he was convicted. This later result applies to Prelić's procedural track; it does not rewrite the separate final outcomes for the other defendants.
Attempts to reopen the case
In October 2012, the Belgrade High Court rejected a request to reopen the already final proceedings against participants convicted in the main case. The request relied on a former police officer's alternative account of how Taton fell, but the court concluded that the proposed evidence was not capable of producing an acquittal or a more favorable legal result under the applicable standard.
Timeline
September 17, 2009: Brice Taton is attacked in central Belgrade before the Partizan–Toulouse match.
September 29, 2009: he dies in a Belgrade hospital.
January 25, 2011: the High Court announces murder and violence convictions against the group of defendants.
January 26, 2012: the Court of Appeal reduces many prison terms while leaving the adjudicated responsibility for the attack intact.
October 2012: a request to reopen the final main proceedings is rejected.
2014 onward: Prelić is arrested, extradited and retried because his earlier case had proceeded in absentia.
2018: reporting records a final appellate reduction of Prelić's retrial sentence to 10 years.
Current classification
The Murder of Brice Taton is classified Solved / Adjudicated. Multiple defendants were convicted for the coordinated fatal attack. The archive records sentence reductions and Prelić's later retrial separately so that an early judgment is not mistaken for every defendant's final legal outcome.