former international Tony Vairelles tried on appeal for violence with a weapon

After an investigation that lasted more than ten years and saw four successive investigating judges, former international Tony Vairelles is back in court. Sentenced with his brothers to five years in prison, two of which were suspended, in May 2022, for “violence in meetings, with premeditation and with a weapon”the former French international will appeal the judgment of this first instance to the Nancy Court of Appeal (Meurthe-et-Moselle), from May 2.

In October 2011, Tony Vairelles and his brothers were accused of having opened fire and injured three guards in the parking lot of a nightclub in Essey-lès-Nancy (Meurthe-et-Moselle). Incarcerated for five months at the start of the investigation, the tricolor striker has always claimed his innocence as well as that of his brothers.

Nullity of proceedings

Frédéric Berna, one of the siblings’ lawyers, had deplored a judgment “at the height of this file, a failed and shabby instruction” after the trial at first instance. “When, after 10 years of investigation, people are sent to prison with a wet finger, I find that it is not very reassuring“, he insisted. In 2022, the footballer with eight selections for the France team between 1998 and 2000 returned to this conviction in an autobiographical book, “Balls in the center“.

Today the brothers are waiting “a better decision, but there is concern and misunderstanding on their part, especially since the first judges did not hear them“, explains Virginie Barbosa, one of the family lawyers who will again plead the nullity of the procedure at the Nancy Court of Appeal.