“I don’t remember anything. It’s because of the alcohol that I have blackouts. Otherwise, it wouldn’t have occurred to me. I sincerely apologize to the complainant. I’m trying to understand cure”, defended Wissam Ben Yedder at the bar of the court.
On December 6, 2024, in Cap d’Ail, the professional footballer drank alone in his Peugeot 208 parked in the Marquet beach car park. “I drank a half liter bottle of whiskey to try to forget my problems with my agents and my wife with whom I am divorcing,” he explains to the court.
In this parking lot, a group of five young people are talking. He joins in the conversation and invites two of them to get into his car. The young man sits in the passenger seat, the young woman in the back seat. After driving for a few minutes, return to the parking lot. The passenger gets off.
“I tried to get out. He actively closed the doors automatically and drove,” declared the 23-year-old complainant to the police during her hearing, read at the hearing by President Christian Legay.
“He ordered me to go to the front and then parked in front of the box in the closed parking lot of his residence. He started to caress my inner thigh. I asked him to take me back to Marquet Beach, he said no, when we were both finished. He was looking at my chest. He started masturbating with his shorts down. He tried to hold me by the shoulders to kiss me. I opened the door, I ran to the trash cans, I hid behind a trash can,” she continues.
Picked up by a passerby, she immediately calls the police.
A few minutes later, the police spotted Ben Yedder’s Peugeot 208, which was still driving in Cap d’Ail. They signal him to stop, but he continues on his way. He was finally arrested at 3:20 a.m. at his home.
“When he sees the police he refuses to stop because he knows that he has just committed a sexual assault,” accuses prosecutor Laura Goudé. He initially denied the facts. Today he says he doesn’t remember because he was drunk. This is not the alcohol trial, it is the trial of Mr. Ben Yedder,” she adds before requesting 30 months in prison, including 18 months suspended.
The hearing continues with the defense’s pleadings.
