After their hearing before the Argentinian courts, the two French rugby players will soon know about their release

Charged with aggravated gang rape during the French national team’s tour of South America, the two 21-year-old players have been under house arrest since July 17.

“We asked for their freedom.” The Argentinian lawyer of Hugo Auradou and Oscar Jegou, Rafael Cuneo Libarona, spoke on Thursday, August 8, after several hours of depositions by his clients, at the judicial center of Mendoza.

These hearings, before the prosecutor of the Sexual Offences Unit and in the presence of lawyers from both parties, were the first for the two French rugby players on the substance of the case, since their arrest a month ago. The players of the French XV, both 21 years old, are accused of aggravated gang rape by a 39-year-old Argentinian woman, after an evening at a nightclub in the wake of the test match of the Blues against the Pumas.

After nine days in prison, Hugo Auradou and Oscar Jegou were placed under house arrest on July 17 and thus kept in pre-trial detention. While their lawyer says he is convinced “that they will quickly regain their freedom”to the point of considering their “return to France”the plaintiff’s lawyer, Natacha Romano, said it would be “logical and coherent” that the players remain charged on Argentine soil.

This same lawyer considered that these hours of hearings made it possible to expose “the facts that occurred and the facts reported by the victim, that is to say confirming them”. She did, however, deplore a lack of clarity from the French regarding her client’s consent: Hugo Auradou and Oscar Jegou, according to her, “never could answer whether they had asked the victim whether she agreed or not.”

For their part, the players of Stade Rochelais and Section paloise continue to claim that the sexual relationship was consensual and to deny any form of violence, despite the injuries noted by forensic examinations and the statements of the complainant. According to their lawyer, the Argentine justice system must rule by Monday on their request for release.