Argentine justice continued on Tuesday, for the second consecutive day, the examination of the request for dismissal of the case for Hugo Auradou and Oscar Jegou, the two French Rugby players charged with aggravated rape in July, on the sidelines of a tour of the XV of France in this country.
After the presentations on Monday by the prosecution, which requested the dismissal of the case, that is to say the abandonment of the proceedings against the players, then their lawyers, it was the turn of Natacha Romano, the lawyer for the plaintiff, a 39-year-old Argentinian, to plead.
Me Romano was to assert his opposition to the dismissal of the case and his request that Auradou and Jégou be tried in a trial.
The lawyers all arrived around 9:00 a.m. (12:00 GMT) at the judicial center of Mendoza (west), without making a statement to the journalists present, AFP noted. The complainant's brother also arrived later.
Judge Eleonora Arenas, presiding over the hearing behind closed doors, could render her decision immediately after the debates, or more likely put it under advisement in a few days, lawyers said.
For almost five months, Auradou and Jegou, 21 years old, have remained charged with aggravated rape because they were committed in a meeting, for alleged acts that occurred on the night of July 6 to 7 in a hotel in Mendoza, where the XV of France had just played a test match against Argentina, followed by a “third half”.
Both have affirmed from the beginning that the sexual relations with the complainant, met in a nightclub, were consensual and without violence. The plaintiff's lawyer, however, denounced a rape with “terrible violence”, in a case which saw two radically opposed versions of the facts clash. Apart from a convergence on the reality of sexual acts, and an alcoholic context.
After Monday's hearing, the players' lawyer Rafael Cuneo Libarona welcomed a “very, very good” presentation by the prosecution in favor of dismissal, at the end of “an extremely productive investigation”.
He reaffirmed that “for the defense, there was no type of crime” and that “there was indeed consent from this 40-year-old lady”.
Me Romano, for his part, deplored a hearing during which a victim was “accused of lying”, instead of “evaluating what happened between the four walls” of the hotel room. She said she feared “a complaint for false testimony, a request for reparations” to come against her client, denouncing the offensive “style” of the players' lawyer.
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