What verdict for Wissam Ben Yedder? The former captain of AS Monaco and French international is expected this Tuesday at the Nice court where his trial for drunken sexual assault took place on October 15.
At the end of the hearing, the prosecution requested one year in prison and 18 months of probation against the attacker.
“I ask for forgiveness”
“Mr. Ben Yedder considered that (the victim) was a piece of meat and that he could help himself,” declared the prosecutor, denouncing the “thin” explanations of the 34-year-old player, second top scorer in the history of AS Monaco.
“I don’t remember anything, I can’t say if I did it. It’s because of the alcohol that I’m here,” confided Ben Yedder at the helm in a weak voice, dressed entirely in black. “I sincerely ask for forgiveness from (the victim), from his family, from my family.”
Wissam Ben Yedder was on trial for acts committed on the evening of September 6. He was drinking in his car in a parking lot near a beach below his home in Cap d'Ail, on the outskirts of Monaco. There, he made friends with a group of young people, three boys who knew him as a player and two more suspicious girls.
He alternated kindness and aggression, said the victim, aged 23, explaining that he ended up accepting, “out of fear”to get into the player's car, who drove it against his will into the parking lot of his residence.
“Stop thinking”
There, after pushing the baby seat of his two-year-old child, he caressed the thigh of the young woman, who pushed him away, then masturbated with one hand while trying to attract him with the other. to kiss him.
Initially paralyzed, the victim managed after a few minutes to open the car door and escape.
“I am no longer the same person”, she testified, in tears. “I was a happy girl who made stupid jokes, and now I don't trust anymore, I have nightmares, I don't sleep anymore, I don't work anymore…”
On the evening of the incident, a passerby walked her towards her friends in the parking lot and she called the police.
There, Ben Yedder returned, but he did not stop despite the orders of the gendarmes, who finally found him shortly after in front of his home, with a blood alcohol level of 0.76 mg/l of exhaled air. , or 1.52 g/l of blood.
“Alcohol made me forget, it helped me stop thinking (…). I realize that it was the worst mistake of my life”he explained on the stand.
Football has a string of legal problems. Convicted in Spain for tax fraud, he is due to be tried on December 27 for psychological violence against his wife, and he was indicted for rape last summer.
