The latest on French duo rape case
NEWS: An Argentine judge on Tuesday started deliberating on a request by two French rugby players to dismiss rape charges against them, their lawyer said.
Defence lawyers and prosecutors in the case against Hugo Auradou and Oscar Jegou, accused by an Argentine woman of raping her in a hotel room after a game in July, have asked for the case to be thrown out.
The judge will take a few days to come to a decision, the players’ lawyer Rafael Cuneo Libarona told reporters on Tuesday. “It’s a complicated case,” he said.
The judge, who heard the complainant’s closing arguments Tuesday, did not give a date for her decision.
Auradou and Jegou, both 21, were held for nearly two months in Argentina in connection with the alleged attack on a 39-year-old woman on the night of July 6.
They were allowed to return to France in September.
They deny raping the complainant in a hotel in Mendoza, about 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) west of Argentina’s capital Buenos Aires, saying there had been consensual sex.
Last month, the prosecutor’s office in Mendoza came out in support of a defence motion for charges of aggravated rape – a term used for suspected gang rape – to be dismissed.
Auradou and Jegou were arrested two days after winning their first international caps for France against Argentina in Mendoza.
The woman, whom they met in a nightclub, alleged they assaulted her viciously in a hotel room.
A psychological assessment of the accuser, ordered by the prosecution, however, revealed “a series of inconsistencies and contradictions” in her testimony and concluded that her version of events was “not plausible.”
Cuneo Libarona has said the case should be “a wake-up call to reflect on wrongful accusations against people who are innocent.”
The complainant’s lawyer, Natacha Romano, insisted that “investigations must continue” into what happened that night.
