Tony Vairelles, former striker of the French football team, and three of his brothers have been appearing free since Monday before the Nancy Criminal Court, tried for violence with a weapon committed ten years earlier at the exit of a club. night.
Tony Vairelles, former striker of the French football team, and three of his brothers have been appearing free since Monday before the Nancy Criminal Court, tried for violence with a weapon committed ten years earlier at the exit of a club. night. Fabrice, Jimmy, Giovan and Tony Vairelles took turns at the helm, each wearing a black surgical mask over their noses. They must respond until Friday to “violence in meetings, with premeditation and with a weapon”. The four brothers are suspected of having opened fire and injured three security guards at the Les Quatre-As nightclub in Essey-lès-Nancy (Meurthe-et-Moselle) on the night of October 22 to 23, 2011.
During that evening, Giovan and Jimmy, then aged 20 and 30 respectively, had been expelled from the nightclub after an altercation, then returned armed, accompanied by Tony and Fabrice, 38 and 40 at the time. At first, the brothers had been indicted for attempted murder, facts punishable by life imprisonment. After requalification, they now incur a ten-year prison sentence and a fine of 150,000 euros. The three security guards of the nightclub appear alongside them, responding to violence in a meeting and, for two of them, with weapons, in this case “a tear gas canister, security barriers and a truncheon”, facts punishable by three and five years’ imprisonment.
Before addressing the merits of the case, the lawyer of the Vairelles siblings, Virginie Barbosa, claimed the nullity of the procedure, arguing the slowness of the instruction which saw four successive investigating judges. “I think it’s lamentable, it’s inadmissible to judge in such conditions, in such a time,” she argued, recalling that the trial opened “ten years and five months” after the facts. The lawyer argued that in the absence of video surveillance, the file “is based on testimonies” and witnesses who for “some are no longer there” and others who “the more they are questioned, the less they remember. “. The court, however, joined the incident to the merits. Tony Vairelles, from the gypsy community, was selected eight times for the France team, from 1998 to 2000 (1 goal). He notably wore the colors of Lens, Lyon, Bordeaux, Bastia and Gueugnon.
Any reproduction prohibited
www.parismatch.com
