The examination of the request for dismissal, in other words for abandonment of proceedings, against French rugby players Hugo Auradou and Oscar Jegou, charged with rape in Argentina in July, was adjourned to a future hearing on October 25, announced Friday the lawyers.
During a brief hearing, the plaintiff’s lawyers submitted additional elements of a medical nature, which were “incorporated” in the file, the plaintiff’s lawyer, Natacha Romano, explained to the media. The actual pleadings on the dismissal of the case have been postponed until October 25, confirmed the lawyers of both parties.
The documents provided by the defense relate to a coagulation pathology of the complainant, a highly controversial element of the case, linked to the lesions observed after sexual relations with the players.
Arguments “rejected” but placed in the file
Judge Eleonora Arenas, presiding over Friday’s hearing, “rejected” the prosecution’s arguments on these new elements, a spokesperson for the provincial justice of Mendoza, Martin Ahumada, told AFP. However, according to Mr. Romano, they were indeed included in the file. As a result, Friday’s hearing was adjourned after just over an hour, and “on Friday the 25th the dismissal of the case will be pleaded, and it will be decided whether it is granted or not”added the spokesperson for provincial justice, suggesting a decision the same day. This is something several lawyers doubt, believing that the judge could give herself a few additional days for a decision under advisement.
One of the players’ Argentine lawyers, Rafael Cuneo Libarona, deplored to the media on Friday, a new “stratagem” lawyers to delay the procedure, while“it was planned to plead today for the dismissal of the players”.
Auradou and Jegou, 21, have been charged for more than three months with aggravated gang rape, allegedly occurring in a hotel room in Mendoza, where the French XV had just played a match against Argentina. They have maintained from the beginning that the sexual relations with the complainant, a 39-year-old Argentinian they met in a nightclub, were consensual and without violence. His lawyer, on the contrary, denounced a rape with “violence terrible”a customer “savagely beaten”.
