BUENOS AIRES: Two French rugby players held in Argentina for almost two months on rape charges headed home Tuesday after a court allowed them to return to France pending the conclusion of their case. Hugo Auradou and Oscar Jegou arrived at Buenos Aires airport on Tuesday evening and headed for passport control without speaking to the press.

The players were due to board a flight to Paris shortly before midnight and were expected to arrive on Wednesday at 5:45 pm (1545 GMT), their lawyer Rafael Cuneo Libarona said. Earlier in the day a court in Mendoza, about 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) west of the capital Buenos Aires, ruled that the duo can leave the country “from this moment,” it said in a statement.

The prosecution had recommended that the players be allowed to travel because the accusation had “lost its initial force.” Jegou and Auradou, both 21, were arrested in July, two days after winning their first international caps against Argentina in Mendoza.

They were charged with the aggravated rape of a 39-year-old woman who alleged they viciously assaulted her in a hotel room after a nightout following the match. The men deny the accusation, saying sex with the woman had been consensual.

They were released from detention into house arrest on July 17, and freed under supervision last month. The pair were allowed to travel from Mendoza to Buenos Aires last week pending a hearing into a request for the charges to be dropped.

A date for that hearing has yet to be set. Tuesday’s ruling requires the pair to “appear if they are summoned to the Argentine consulate in France,” to report virtually “as often as required,” or return “to appear in Mendoza if requested.” A judge also rejected a request from the accuser for further psychological examinations of the rugby players.

‘Like a brute’

Late Tuesday, the plaintiff gave an account to the press of what she said happened the night she met Auradou in a nightclub in Mendoza. “When he asked me to go and have a drink at his hotel, I said yes,” she told journalists from France 2’s Envoye Special, in clips released ahead of the program’s September 12 broadcast. Once in the hotel room, she said she asked to leave, but alleged the rugby player prevented her from doing so. “He grabbed my neck. He put me on the bed. He stripped me like a brute,” she said, before choking her “so that I had no oxygen left”. “I tried to react by slapping him. Instead of stopping him, this slap only encouraged him to carry on.” According to the complainant, Jegou then entered the room. But instead of helping her as she believed he would, she alleges he went on to assault her as well.

‘Joy and relief’

The French Rugby Federation (FFR) welcomed Tuesday’s ruling, and underscored the men must be considered innocent until proven otherwise. Auradou’s club in the French city of Pau expressed “joy and relief” at the news that he would be returning home.

According to the complainant’s lawyer, Natacha Romano, her client suffered injuries to her face, back, breasts, legs and ribs, as well as bite and scratch marks. Defense lawyers have pointed to witnesses and cameras allegedly detecting no injuries on the woman as she left the hotel. 

The plaintiff’s lawyers filed a motion on Monday for the recusal of the prosecutors in charge of the case, alleging a “lack of objectivity” on their part. The woman, her representatives say, recently tried to commit suicide and would continue to suffer “irreparable harm” while the men she accuses resume their lives in France. — AFP