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LONDON − Manchester City and France international footballer Benjamin Mendy has been charged with a further count of rape, a court told yesterday.
The 27-year-old defender was already facing six allegations of rape and one of sexual assault but was charged last week with a seventh rape.
Restrictions on reporting the latest rape charge were lifted as Mendy appeared at Chester Crown Court for a preliminary hearing before his trial next year.
The charges relate to alleged offences against five different women in 2020 and this year.
The footballer − who lives in Prestbury, near Macclesfield, northwest England − appeared alongside his co-defendant Louis Saha Matturie, 40, from Eccles on the outskirts of Manchester.
Matturie is charged with six serious sex offences against young women.
Both men were remanded into custody after a 40-minute hearing. Their trial, which was scheduled to take place in January, has been pushed to later next year.
Mendy was a £52 million (RM292 million) signing from Monaco in 2017 and has played 75 times for City but his playing time has been limited by injuries and a loss of form.
The last of his ten caps for France came in November 2019.
The left-back, who won the World Cup with France in 2018, has been suspended by the Premier League champions pending the outcome of the criminal proceedings. – AFP, December 23, 2021