One of eight rape charges against world football champion Benjamin Mendy, currently on trial in England, has been dropped for lack of sufficient evidence from the prosecution, Judge Stephen Everett announced on Tuesday.
The 28-year-old French defender, suspended for a year by Manchester City, has been on trial since early August in Chester, northern England, and remains charged with seven rapes, one attempted rape and one sexual assault against seven women. The facts took place in July and August 2021.
Prosecutor Timothy Cray announced in court on Tuesday that he was giving up on obtaining a conviction for the facts concerning victim number seven, who had been questioned in the morning. Judge Stephen Everett then ordered the jury to enter a verdict of not guilty on the relevant counts. His co-defendant, Louis Saha Matturie was also found not guilty of two rapes and a sexual assault on the same woman. He remains charged with six rapes and three sexual assaults.
A video at the center of the debate
Defense lawyers had earlier questioned the qualification of rape when questioning the victim in the morning. The debates had in particular revolved around a video of the antics between the accuser and Louis Saha Matturie of which she denied having known the existence, but on which we would however see her looking several times in the direction of the telephone with which she had been recorded, held by Louis Saha Matturie.
Winner of the 2018 World Cup with the France team, where he was a substitute, Benjamin Mendy spent more than four months, from August 2021 to January 2022, in pre-trial detention. Released in early January, he was placed under judicial supervision pending trial.
Trained in Le Havre, revealed in Marseille and spent a season with Monaco, Benjamin Mendy became the most expensive defender in history in 2017 when the Citizens paid 52 million pounds (about 61.4 million euros at the current price). ) to secure his services.