Jégou-Auradou case: the plaintiff's defense announced that it would appeal

Mardi, la justice argentine avait annoncé abandonner les poursuites contre Jegou et Aradou. maxppp – montage ML

L’avocate de la femme de 39 ans, qui accuse les deux rugbymen français de viol aggravé, a décidé de faire appel, a-t-elle annoncé mardi 10 décembre, quelques heures après le non-lieu décidé par la justice argentine.

Oscar Jegou and Hugo Auradou thought they were seeing the end of the legal tunnel with the decision on Tuesday by the Argentine justice system to drop the charges for aggravated rape of which they are accused by a complainant they met in a nightclub. But their lawyer announced to AFP that she intended to appeal.

Judge Eleonora Arenas, from the judicial center of Mendoza (west) where the case is being investigated, issued her decision of dismissal on Tuesday morning, considering that “the act investigated does not constitute an offense”, so that there had been no rape. “The judge said that there was no offense because the act was consensual”, specified the players' main lawyer in Argentina, Me Rafael Libarona. “The judicial rehabilitation is acquired”, welcomed the Parisian lawyer of the players Me Antoine Vey, “the two players were victims of false accusations”.

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“Terrible violence” and “total rejection” of the dismissal

But the plaintiff's defense, which had initially withdrawn from the Mendoza judicial center without making a statement, announced its decision to appeal, de facto referring the case to another instance. The lead attorney for the prosecution, Natacha Romano, who has always maintained that her client was the victim of “terrible violence” and pleaded for a “total rejection” of the dismissal, soberly indicated to the AFP by message without further comment that she would make “appeal”.

Me Romero complained throughout the investigation of an investigation spent “accusing a victim of lying”, instead of “evaluating what happened between (the) four walls”from the hotel room. She has repeatedly accused the provincial justice system in Mendoza of “bias”, and tried to have the two prosecutors in charge of the investigation, then Judge Arenas, dismissed.

“Notorious contradictions, inconsistencies”

Auradou and Jegou, 21, are being prosecuted for aggravated rape, committed in a group on the night of July 6-7 in a hotel in Mendoza where the French XV were coming to play Argentina. The two players have maintained from the beginning that the sexual relations with the complainant, a 39-year-old Argentinian woman, were consensual and without violence, in a case that saw two radically opposed versions of the facts, apart from a convergence on the reality of sexual acts in the bedroom, and an alcoholic context.

But early in the case, particularly in mid-August when deciding to release the two players who had been placed until then in preventive detention for a week and then under house arrest for almost a month, the prosecution had noted “notorious contradictions, inconsistencies, gray areas” in the complainant's story. This is why the Public Prosecutor's Office had argued for the prosecution to be dropped in early October at the end of the investigation. According to Mr. Libarona, brother of the Argentine Minister of Justice, “the judge was categorical when she spoke of the contradictions and inconsistencies of the plaintiff”.