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Real Madrid striker Benzema does not appear for trial
This Wednesday, October 20, Real Madrid striker Karim Benzema will have to return to Versailles, the city where he had to spend a night in prison in November 2015.
The white player will be tried by a court for the "Valbuena case", where he was accused of being an accessory to the blackmail of his former teammate Mathieu Valbuena.
What is the "Valbuena Case"?
By 2015, the French striker was accused of complicity in an attempt at blackmail, where Benzema was allegedly in charge of pressuring Mathieu Valbuena so that he had to pay a large sum of money and thus prevent a video of sexual content of the player and his wife.
These images were obtained in July 2014, after Valbuena had his mobile device fixed with Ael Angot, who is known to several soccer players for his computer skills.
In this way, Valbuena would contact him to try to recover some data from his smartphone, which had been damaged.
At first Angot stored the file on her computer with no intention of making it public. However, several months later the computer scientist would have to pay a debt and resorted to video.
For this he joined Mustapha Zouaoui, who is also known by footballers for providing them with luxury products, both would carry out a plan to try to obtain a financial reward in exchange for not making the video public.
The main idea of all this was to let the midfielder know about the existence of these images through his partner Dijibril Cissé and at the same time propose that Angot would help him to erase said sexual content.
However, Valbuena would not react to this, and so they turned to Younes Houas, one of his trusted men.
The player did not want to agree to the requests and decided to take this case to the police, who began tapping his telephone conversations in search of information.
According to this, they discovered that the blackmailers involved had contacted Zenati, who in turn asked Benzema for help.
The forward of France and Real Madrid confirmed that those conversations did exist, but that he only wanted to advise his friend and never with the intention of pressuring him for what he will pay.
Five years in prison for Benzema if convicted
Despite the words of the white striker and when he pleaded not guilty, the French Supreme Court considered that he had participated and that he was part of an illicit association for the preparation of a punishable offense, which has a minimum of five years in prison.
In what was obtained during the intervened calls, it could be heard that Benzema described his partner as little man and assured that he had swallowed the pressure.
Likewise, Benzema also acknowledged to the French authorities in the first interrogations that they made him that he had told Valbuena that he himself had seen the video.
These were statements that he would later retract and that the prosecution interprets as a way to increase pressure so that he will pay.
The Valbuena case took him away from the French team
All this situation caused that Karim Benzema was separated from the selection of France. This is how the player played his last match with the national team on October 8 with Armenia, a match in which he just said goodbye with a double and an assist.
However, Didier Deschamps made the decision not to have him for Euro 2016, where the French team was runner-up after being defeated in the final against Portugal.
In the same way, he was never in the plans for what was the 2018 World Cup in Russia despite the fact that the player was in one of his best moments of his career, he had even been nominated as one of the candidates for the Ballon d'Or for that anus.
Despite all this, the French coach at the time of giving the list of 26 players for the Eurocup wanted to touch on the issue of the player and commented the following: "I made this decision for the good of the national team and I think what I did with Benzema it is the best. But we must not forget that over the years the French team won many titles. "
Karim quoted this Wednesday, October 20
The Real Madrid forward's lawyers have tried to avoid this summons. However, Karim Benzema will have to appear in the dock this Wednesday, October 20, but despite this, the presence of the forward has not yet been confirmed.