French footballer Benjamin Mendy was found not guilty of rape and attempted rape by a British court on Friday, five months after being acquitted of six other charges of rape and one of sexual assault.
Aged 28, Benjamin Mendy burst into tears when the verdict was announced, after a three-week trial in Chester (north of England). The jury delivered its verdict after just over three hours of deliberation.
He had been retried since the end of June on two charges for which the jury had not reached a verdict at the end of the first trial. He was charged with the rape of a 24-year-old woman in October 2020 and the attempted rape of a 29-year-old woman two years earlier, charges he strongly contested.
The ten-cap defender with Les Bleus was suspended by Manchester City, who did not renew his contract, which expires on June 30.
Benjamin Mendy had been imprisoned at the end of August 2021 and had spent more than four months in pre-trial detention, before being released at the beginning of January 2022, and placed under judicial supervision pending his first 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.