Ribery, Benzema on trial over prostitution

Staff reports Modified: January 20, 2014 at 10:36 am •  Published: January 20, 2014




"We have a truncated trial. On one hand the civil party (Dehar) who was, let's say, at the time the victim, who is no longer the victim and no longer considers herself one and therefore she is out of the trial," Ribery's lawyer, Carlo Alberto Brusa, said Monday. "On the other hand, I remind you that the prosecutor has recommended that the case be dismissed. By consequence, today, we have a trial without accusations."

Ribery is alleged to have had sex with Dehar three times — including at the home of Kamel Ramdani, 39, one of several people who are on trial after a probe into a suspected network of prostitutes operating out of a nightclub called "Zaman Cafe" on Paris' Champs-Elysees first opened in 2010.

"As far as I'm concerned, I will do everything possible so that France and a leading football player will be cleared of everything," Brusa said.


"No one sold their charms at my establishment," Georges Farhat said during Monday's trial, adding that he "never saw" Zahia who he only knew of as "a friend of a barmaid who worked there."


Benzema has denied all the allegations. The 26-year-old Benzema is alleged to have paid €500 ($678) to have sex with Dehar in May 2008 the night he won the French player of the year award playing for his former club Lyon. At the time Dehar was 16.

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