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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.

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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.

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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.”

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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.

 

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