Kheira Hamraoui was beaten with an iron bar. Two years on, this story is far from over

After transferring again to Paris Saint-Germain from Spain in the summertime of 2021, midfielders Kheira Hamraoui and Aminata Diallo had heaps in frequent.

Each France internationals, they adopted the identical Muslim religion, stayed in the identical lodge of their first few weeks on the Paris membership and shared a summer time vacation to Tanzania. They had been additionally in the identical place on the identical time when a brutal assault occurred in Chatou, west of Paris, on November 4, 2021.

On that day, two years in the past, the footballers’ lives took very totally different paths.

On the journey again residence from a staff dinner, Hamraoui and Diallo had been stopped by two masked males. One hit Hamraoui with an iron bar, focusing on her legs, and the opposite held Diallo to the steering wheel.

Stories quickly emerged that Diallo was linked to the assault so she might take Hamraoui’s place within the PSG staff.

In September 2022, 10 months on, Diallo and 5 males had been arrested and charged with three counts of aggravated assault and felony conspiracy. In line with a police report, Diallo instigated the assault on Hamraoui, her motive being “violent jealousy”.

One man admitted to beating up Hamraoui and one other is suspected of pinning Diallo to the steering wheel. The lads declare to have acted on the orders of an unknown particular person whom they haven’t recognized. They stated Diallo instigated the assault.

Diallo has at all times maintained she is harmless.

The story has obtained international media protection, with claims and counterclaims on either side. Le Monde reported the speculation of a revenge assault primarily based on the connection between Hamraoui and Eric Abidal, the previous France males’s worldwide and Barcelona males’s director of soccer, which was initially investigated as a lead by police. The general public prosecutor confirmed Abidal has by no means been implicated within the investigation however was heard as a witness.

Police and psychiatric studies have been leaked, with French media reporting Diallo was discovered by one psychiatrist to have “simple character issues”. The participant’s lawyer says that’s “bull****”.

Particulars have emerged, once more by way of French media, of malicious nameless telephone calls made to PSG gamers. Diallo’s residence and automobile in Paris had been additionally tapped and he or she was recorded saying, “They missed her… break her face.” Her lawyer doesn’t dispute she stated these phrases however argues the phrases are taken in isolation with out context.

There was what has been described as “collateral” injury too, with modifications within the administration at PSG and France’s nationwide staff considered additional fallout from the incident. And, in addition to felony expenses, Hamraoui and PSG are pursuing civil actions associated to the case.

The aftershock has been felt far and large.

A person referred to in preliminary studies as “Cesar M” — Cesar Mavacala, Diallo’s former advisor — is underneath police investigation for expenses together with threatening PSG with violence and “acquiring the departure of gamers (Hamraoui) and sports activities managers (Didier Olle-Nicolle) from PSG by coercion”. There have been claims of organised gang fraud stated to be linked to Mavacala’s case, and an allegation of sexual assault in opposition to former PSG coach Olle-Nicolle that’s strenuously denied.

Mavacala, who has by no means been a registered agent, is the accomplice of former PSG participant Kadidiatou Diani and the sporting advisor of PSG and France striker Marie-Antoinette Katoto.

“My consumer categorically denies any involvement in any way within the acts of which he has been unjustly accused,” Mavacala’s lawyer Sandrine Pegand instructed The Athletic.

However on the centre of all of it are the 2 former PSG team-mates, Hamraoui and Diallo, ceaselessly linked by the occasions of that night time in November two years in the past.

Hamraoui, now 33, has written a guide — ‘Kheira a contre-pied’, which roughly interprets to “Kheira on the counter-attack” — and is filming a documentary concerning the case. She left PSG in Could 2023, saying the membership had “deserted” her, and joined Membership America in Mexico in September.

“Would they (PSG) have carried out the identical to me if I’d been a person?” she wrote in her guide. “Definitely not… My story could be very revealing of what ladies signify on the planet of soccer in the present day.”

Diallo, 28, now performs for Al Nassr in Saudi Arabia. It’s unclear when the investigation will finish and too early to substantiate if or when the case will go to a trial.

“This era could be very complicated for her,’ says Diallo’s lawyer, Romain Ruiz. “On the one hand, she has all of the stress (of the case) and then again, Kheira, she was a pal, stated to the police: ‘Aminata did that to me and I’m certain of that’.”

Hamraoui’s lawyer denies her consumer instructed the police she thought Diallo was behind the assault.

The Athletic has spoken to these near PSG, the gamers’ attorneys and the general public prosecutor to unpick the tangled net of what has occurred to Hamraoui, Diallo and Mavacala since November 4 2021.

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Kheira Hamraoui

When her PSG contract expired in Could 2023, Hamraoui stated in a social media put up she was turning a web page after two years of “an infernal storm” at a membership that “deserted” her and “did the whole lot it might to make (her) go away”.

In January 2022, two months following the assault, Hamraoui returned to the pitch for PSG however skilled a turbulent second half of the season. On February 11, throughout a PSG males’s sport in opposition to Rennes, supporters held banners which learn: “Aminata Diallo, we strongly assist you”, and “Kheira Hamraoui, whose flip is it?”, referring to claims concerning the variety of lovers Hamraoui has allegedly had.

“The objective was to make certain that Kheira would now not play at PSG,” says Hamraoui’s lawyer Julia Minkowski.

“She has been psychologically assaulted for 10 months,” her agent Sonia Souid instructed L’Equipe in September 2022. “She has been dragged by way of the mud, threatened with dying, insulted, harassed at her office by a number of team-mates.”

Hamraoui had a 12 months left on her PSG contract and was decided to honour it however felt the membership had been attempting to power her out.

“Maybe PSG had been unable or unwilling to cope with all of the media consideration for causes apart from sporting ones,” Hamraoui instructed AFP in September this 12 months. “They selected the simple means out by attempting to push me out earlier than the top of my contract.”

This was a marked change of tone from Hamraoui. In an interview with L’Equipe in June 2022, Hamraoui had stated: “The overwhelming majority of (gamers) supported me. I used to be additionally touched by the assist of the entire workers and the membership. My return would have been rather more tough if I had not been supported.”

Nevertheless, in Hamraoui’s guide, in a chapter titled ‘PSG, an inhumane membership’, she claims she couldn’t seem in any membership footage, she was not known as up similtaneously her team-mates in June forward of the 2022-23 season and was not knowledgeable of deliberate squad conferences. She says her physio appointments had been delayed and he or she was initially not invited to finish obligatory medical checks in July.

The 33-year-old additionally says she was given one T-shirt — not two — at first of the 2022-23 season, when often gamers obtain new package. Hamraoui claims that when the staff went to Spain for a pre-season journey, the brand new sporting director Angelo Castellazzi instructed her to remain in Paris.

These near PSG, who like others on this article want to stay nameless to honour the authorized course of, keep they acted as responsibly and sensitively as attainable. They acknowledge Hamraoui was at all times thought-about to be the sufferer of the assault and their precedence has at all times been to assist the participant. They’ve totally complied with the police authorities and have shunned commenting publicly out of respect for the judicial course of. They consider Hamraoui was handled on an equal footing together with her team-mates. She additionally appeared in a number of the membership’s social media posts in the course of the 2021-22 and 2022-23 seasons.

PSG modified the ladies’s supervisor, assistant coaches and sporting director after deciding to take the membership in a distinct course, appointing the previous Lyon head coach Gerard Precheur as their new boss on August 1 2022. He left his function by mutual consent in September 2023 with the membership citing “private causes” for his departure.

The brand new coach and sporting director assessed the staff and determined which gamers would keep. Midfielder Hamraoui was instructed she would now not be a part of the brand new venture, and that the membership supposed to recruit gamers with totally different technical profiles. They signed different midfielders, together with Jackie Groenen from Manchester United and Lieke Martens from Barcelona.

Hamraoui claims Castellazzi instructed her agent that she wouldn’t be a part of the staff and he or she needed to go away. However she turned down presents for a mortgage transfer from Manchester United, Juventus, Inter Milan, Roma and Parma to remain at PSG.

She made solely 5 league begins within the first half of the season. When the switch window opened in January 2023, Hamraoui claims PSG’s sporting director knowledgeable her agent they had been going to recruit different midfielders and he or she needed to go away.

However Hamraoui stayed, and in February the then-France supervisor Corinne Diacre surprisingly named her within the squad for the Tournoi de France, a pleasant worldwide match.

On February 15, Hamraoui began in France’s 1-0 win over Denmark. It was her fortieth cap, one 12 months after her earlier nationwide staff look.

Three days after a disappointing 0-0 draw with Norway within the ultimate match of that match, France captain and defender Wendie Renard introduced her withdrawal from the France squad with the World Cup solely 5 months away.

Renard stated she might “now not assist the present system which is much from the necessities of the best stage. It’s a unhappy day however essential to protect my psychological well being.”

Diani and Katoto adopted.

“If profound modifications are launched, I’ll be again,” stated Diani.

“I’m now not consistent with the administration of the France staff nor the values it promotes,” added Katoto.

Diacre was sacked as France’s head coach on March 9 and was changed by Herve Renard (no relation to Wendie) on March 30. On the identical day, police interviewed Diacre as a witness regarding the Hamraoui case.

Diacre stated she was the goal of intimidation within the spring of 2022 to take away Hamraoui from the nationwide staff. This was confirmed by Diacre’s lawyer Christophe Ayela and the general public prosecutor.

Hamraoui didn’t make France’s 2023 World Cup squad. After the announcement, she instructed radio station France Inter: “I’m very unhappy and offended. I see it as an injustice.” The as soon as Champions League winner nonetheless desires of returning to the nationwide staff for subsequent 12 months’s Olympics in Paris.

“At some point, we could discover out what was behind my ousting,” Hamraoui instructed AFP. “I’m satisfied that if I had been Swedish, English or Spanish, I might by no means have been deserted by my federation or my membership, as I used to be after my assault. I’ve stated it earlier than and I’ll say it once more: in France, we don’t like victims.”

Hamraoui thinks she was allotted with by PSG so the membership might defend their status.

“They wash their soiled laundry as a household, and attempt to hush issues up or eliminate troublesome components to be able to save face,” she wrote in her guide. “Nothing should present in public. Then again, I’m a lady, and the unhappy actuality is that the membership doesn’t give a rattling about ladies’s soccer.”

Sources from PSG firmly deny all of those claims. It’s to be famous that the membership invested of their ladies’s staff a lot sooner than many others. In January, the ladies’s staff will transfer into the brand new state-of-the-art coaching centre in Poissy alongside the boys’s.

A PSG spokesperson stated: “Kheira Hamraoui defined in her personal phrases in an interview with L’Equipe on June 15 2022 how she was touched by the assist of the entire workers and the membership (PSG) and the way issues would have been rather more tough if she had not been supported.

“The membership acted responsibly and sensitively to assist and supply care whereas adhering to the correct authorized course of. The membership’s precedence was to assist Kheira Hamraoui and keep the absolute best local weather inside the dressing room, regardless of the circumstances and authorized proceedings.”

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Aminata Diallo

“She’s in the midst of a media disaster,” says Ruiz. “Persons are saying that she is a witch, responsible, and what she has carried out to Kheira is a shame. She’s underneath stress.”

Following the assault, Diallo performed 15 extra instances for PSG and her contract expired in the summertime of 2022. She stopped enjoying solely to give attention to the case, in accordance with one in all her attorneys, Mourad Battikh, and was charged in September final 12 months.

Diallo was put underneath strict judicial supervision however a choose accepted her attorneys’ request to change her bail situations to permit her to work overseas. In January 2023, she joined Liga F facet Levante on a six-month contract however her 12-month possibility to increase was not triggered.

In August this 12 months, Diallo joined Al Nassr, the membership Cristiano Ronaldo performs for, in Saudi Arabia.

In line with Ruiz, she determined to maneuver to the Center East for some “contemporary air”, to expertise a brand new league, be nearer aligned together with her Muslim values and escape the scrutiny from the French media.

Diallo, although, remains to be on bail and is forbidden to enter into contact with the attainable co-perpetrators or accomplices of the case, Harmaoui, witnesses or specific members of the PSG staff and administration. She might be summoned by the choose at any level.

In June 2023, Diallo noticed a psychiatrist — a requirement of French regulation in instances akin to these, in accordance with her lawyer Ruiz. She had three appointments, a few of which lasted 9 and a half hours, an incidence her lawyer says he has by no means seen earlier than.

Dr Isabelle Teillet, the psychiatrist, famous, in accordance with a report in Le Journal du Dimanche, Diallo “reveals no specific psychopathological traits” however did current “simple character issues”.

“That’s bull****,” stated Ruiz. “The psychiatric report reveals that it isn’t Diallo’s character that the skilled considers to be disturbed, however it’s only on studying the file despatched to her by the choose that she speaks of a ‘character dysfunction’”.

One other police report, quoted in Le Parisien, described Diallo’s hatred for Hamraoui as “a sluggish, downward psychological spiral that has grow to be pathological”.

“That’s actual bull****,” Ruiz tells The Athletic. “The police should not medical doctors or psychiatrists. They don’t seem to be actually nice investigators. My recommendation to them is to maintain of their area.”

Diallo’s attorneys need the recordings of Diallo’s conversations in her automobile and flat to be disregarded from the case. French media have reported she was wiretapped for six months from April 2022, when she was residing in Paris. The choose’s choice can be heard on November 24.

The recordings from after the assault appeared notably damning. Diallo is heard saying: “She had nothing, brother. We don’t give a rattling… Her assault, who cares… She didn’t even keep a day in hospital… She didn’t get something, brother… They missed her… break her face.”

Her attorneys affirm Diallo stated this stuff however keep her phrases are taken out of context. They argue the way in which through which the police acquired the recordings from her automobile and flat was unlawful. “The police requested for authorisation however primarily based on false hypotheses,” says Ruiz.

It’s a authorized technicality however Hamraoui’s lawyer Minkowski believes the recordings are related.

“That’s the reason they need them out,” she tells The Athletic. “Often, in case you ask one thing to be out of a file, you have got cause for that.”

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Cesar Mavacala

Mavacala is Diani’s accomplice and advises Katoto — two of the three gamers who stepped down from the France nationwide staff earlier than Diacre’s dismissal. He was additionally very near Diallo and, though not a registered agent, was her advisor in 2022.

He’s additionally dealing with felony expenses: Mavacala is suspected of attempting to realize a monetary or different benefit by violence, threats of violence or coercion by claiming that Katoto would solely lengthen her contract if Hamraoui left PSG on the finish of the 2021-22 season.

Hamraoui wouldn’t go away the membership for an additional 12 months, however Katoto signed a three-year contract anyway value a reported €600,000 (now £521,000; $643,000) gross annual wage in July 2022.

Mavacala denies any wrongdoing, and whereas the investigation continues he’s underneath judicial supervision — much like conditional bail — and banned from showing at PSG’s headquarters, the ladies’s coaching centre and any soccer stadium. He’s additionally forbidden to make contact with Hamraoui, Diallo and 4 former and present PSG staff.

“He (Mavacala) represents different gamers of the staff — even when he has no formal licence to be an agent,” says Hamraoui’s lawyer Minkowski, claiming: “He tried to barter these contracts with one situation: Kheira leaves the staff.”

Mavacala can be suspected of getting been behind claims that led to the departure of former PSG head coach Olle-Nicolle. On Could 24 2022, PSG suspended Olle-Nicolle by mutual consent after saying a number of the membership’s gamers had been allegedly uncovered to “inappropriate actions and feedback”.

The general public prosecutor introduced the opening of a judicial investigation for “sexual assault by an individual in authority” in Could 2022 however no expenses had been introduced.

PSG additionally launched a proper investigation after which launched a press release on July 31 which stated the membership and Olle-Nicolle had “determined to finish their collaboration by mutual settlement”. It added: “Paris Saint-Germain specifies that, following the inner investigation carried out on Could 24, no fault or misconduct has been discovered in opposition to him.”

On June 23 of this 12 months, nonetheless, former PSG participant Diani, Mavacala’s accomplice, lodged a criticism of sexual assault in opposition to Olle-Nicolle and the general public prosecutor opened one other investigation.

Le Parisien reported that, in August 2021, Olle-Nicolle was alleged to have touched a number of gamers’ bottoms — together with Diani’s — with a miniature baseball bat, and likewise put his hand on Diani’s backside. Olle-Nicolle firmly denies all of the accusations and stated he is aware of nothing concerning the incidents.

“The investigation into who’s behind these unfounded accusations revealed the lively function performed by Ms Diani’s accomplice,” claimed Olle-Nicolle in a press release offered by his lawyer, Guillaume Traynard.

“Didier Olle-Nicolle notes that the brand new criticism in opposition to him comes only some weeks after he filed a civil motion in opposition to Ms Diani’s accomplice, within the case through which the latter is underneath investigation for organised fraud.

“He deplores the truth that this criticism is getting used as a method of settling scores and condemns the try to govern the justice system, of which he’s as soon as once more a sufferer.” Olle-Nicolle has subsequently filed a criticism with the general public prosecutor for libel.

Diani’s criticism in opposition to Olle-Nicolle was filed on June 23, seven days earlier than her PSG contract expired. She joined Lyon on a four-year deal on August 1.

The police, L’Equipe report, consider Mavacala — Diani’s accomplice — threatened PSG with the general public launch of the sexual assault story if the membership didn’t comply with his calls for for Diani’s contract renewal. Mavacala’s lawyer Pegand denied this, telling L’Equipe: “Cesar Mavacala protests his innocence.”

Relating to Diani’s criticism, Pegand instructed Le Parisien: “Like many victims of sexual abuse, the primary possibility is to stay silent. So we needed to encourage individuals to talk out and provides my consumer the time she wanted to deliver her case earlier than the courts.”

“I used to be used…” Olle-Nicolle instructed L’Equipe in September 2022. “(I’m) a collateral sufferer of the Hamraoui case.”

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So what occurs now?

Given there at the moment are two important felony instances (Hamraoui’s assault and the costs in opposition to Mavacala), the choose will conduct additional investigations.

“What the investigation has to now decide is whether or not Mavacala simply jumped on the chance of the assault or if there have been different issues,” says Hamraoui’s lawyer, Minkowski.

If there’s a trial, it might be at the least one other 12 months for a date to be set. It could be public with three judges. All these charged and civil events looking for damages would even be current and questioned.

Diallo’s lawyer says she maintains her innocence and won’t plead responsible for a lesser sentence.

“Since day one, the police have determined that it was Aminata Diallo,” Ruiz tells The Athletic. “They ended all the leads that was actual at first of this case. That’s the rationale why I really feel the police don’t do their jobs correctly. It’s too late (now) to comply with the opposite leads.”

Diallo’s worry of going to jail and serving a sentence — which might be as much as 10 years for felony conspiracy — weighs on her shoulders.

“It’s an enormous worry for her,” Ruiz says. “She doesn’t wish to be despatched to jail. Her important worry is that she will be discovered responsible of one thing she didn’t do.”

Diallo’s attorneys say the police have nonetheless not discovered the one who ordered the assault on Hamraoui.

As for Hamraoui, her lawyer believes it’s too lengthy for a sufferer to attend three years for a trial.

This case is much from over.

(Prime images: ANP/Getty Photos; Aurelien Meunier/PSG by way of Getty Photos; design: Eamonn Dalton)