HAMRAUI DIALLO. For the very first time, as Kheira Hamraoui did a few days ago, Aminata Diallo spoke on Thursday October 13 on the BFM TV set.
[Updated Oct 13, 2022 08:29] She has been speaking publicly since the start of the Kheira Hamraoui case. On the antennas of RMC / BFM TV Thursday, October 13, the former PSG player speaks for the first time about her role in this affair and regrets a relentlessness on her person without necessarily exploring other avenues, including that of former French international, Eric Abidal. “Reading the file, the only track really explored since the start is mine,” explains Aminata Diallo, although the investigators heard Éric Abidal and his partner Hayet. “They were auditioned, indeed. Only, like other people. But the track was not explored. The only person who was wiretapped, who had sound systems, where we summoned all the year my entourage is me. To our great astonishment, no other avenue has been explored”.
Indicted at the end of September and placed under judicial supervision in the assault case, the midfielder reiterates her defense and claims not to know the suspects arrested in early September, a few days before her own arrest on September 16, 2022 followed by an indictment delivered on September 22.
“When I see in the media, a few days before, that we caught the attackers, I was rather relieved”, confides the French international, today without a club, to RMC. “And then it finally turns out that they named me as the sponsor. Yet I don’t know them. I’ve never seen them. I’ve never been in contact with them. I’ve never spoken with them. Today, that is established by the investigators in the investigation. I cannot explain why they designate me as being the sponsor. It surprises me all the same that the attackers do not want to give the name of the person who sent them but that they just say that in any case “it’s for Aminata”, she says.
Another extract concerns one of the motives put forward by the investigators about Aminata Diallo, that of sporting jealousy and a rivalry between the two players which would have been badly perceived by the former midfielder of Atletico Madrid. “I was not barred by Kheira Hamraoui as we try to say. The sports director and the coach are very happy, very satisfied with my work and my performance and want to extend me for two seasons. there is no element that shows that at that time it was in my interest to do that. On the contrary, she assures in this interview with RMC. “It is true that in some league matches, she started the matches. There are matches in the Champions League where I started. And then I started with Kheira Hamraoui. There was no direct competition only with Kheira Hamraoui. That’s wrong.”
According to the newspaper L’Equipe, which first reported the facts in 2021, Kheira Hamraoui was attacked on November 4, after an evening between the players and the staff of PSG, near the Bois de Boulogne, in the Paris region. When they had just dropped off one of their partners in front of her home, Aminata Diallo and Kheira Hamraoui, who were sharing the same vehicle, saw two strangers appear, their faces hooded. The two men allegedly asked the two players to open their doors. Kheira Hamraoui reportedly tried to resist as her attacker grabbed hold of an iron bar. Once on the ground, she will receive several heavy blows to the legs.
In L’Equipe on November 17, 2021, some key elements of the attack were revealed. After dropping off Sakina Karchaoui, Aminata Diallo and Kheira Hamraoui would have taken to the road again and “a few moments later, having arrived at “a fairly high truck or van”, parked on the left of the road, the two players would have seen appearing in front of the hood of their car, two strangers, faces masked by black balaclavas. “At that moment, I don’t see a weapon. They immediately start yelling, ‘Open the door! Open the door!”, the player would have explained to the BRB police officers. “The one who was on my side grabbed me and pulled me out of the vehicle. Before, he grabbed a rectangular iron bar that he had hidden in his pants or under his sweater. He gave me a first blow from the first moments of the attack to force me out of the cabin. I fell on the road then on the right side of the roadway. My attacker hit me with an iron bar several times. I saw that he was mainly aiming at my legs and I was trying to protect myself with my hands.”
During his hearing, Kheira Hamraoui would also have described the attackers quite precisely. The latter would be “20-25 years old”, “approximately 1.85 m”, “thin body”, “dressed in dark”. She would also have added that they had a “scum accent” (sic). Investigators would seek from the beginning of the case to understand how the car could be spotted and then blocked so easily. Kheira Hamraoui reportedly explained that two other of her teammates, Jordyn Huitema and Celin Bizet Ildhusøy, told her that when she left the restaurant, they saw a car following them.
Why was Aminata Diallo, the PSG player, teammate of Kheira Hamraoui, placed in police custody in mid-November 2021 and mid-September 2022 before being indicted for “aggravated violence”? According to several sources, the track of an internal rivalry within PSG was quickly explored by investigators. After the aggression of November 4, 2021, Kheira Hamraoui could not indeed honor his place as a starter in the Champions League against Real Madrid while Aminata Diallo, his competitor in the same position in midfield, was a starter. Called up to the France team after two years of absence, the victim also had to forfeit and was replaced by … Aminata Diallo.
According to L’Equipe, Aminata Diallo was “very cooperative” and “very correct” during her first police custody in November 2021. The midfielder denied having any involvement in this attack and also reportedly assured that he has no interest in attacking his teammate and friend Kheira Hamraoui in this way. The footballer had at the time been cleared of all suspicion. His lawyer, interviewed by BFM TV on November 16, had in passing castigated the treatment of his client. “I am very happy, definitely I believe, that my client is exonerated,” he confided. “She came out free from police custody, in my opinion, infamous, scandalous and incoherent,” he lamented.
During her first as well as her second police custody, the former PSG player would have pleaded the conspiracy, as explained by Le Parisien, who obtained several depositions. On September 16, Aminata Diallo allegedly assured investigators that she did not know the four young people who accused her of ordering the attack on Kheira Hamraoui. Why denounce her then, wonder the police. Response from the principal concerned: “It’s easy, for ten months, that’s what we’ve been trying to say in the press, so it’s not difficult to tell that. I would like to know who my accomplices are .” And to add, a little later: “I feel like it’s a plot against me.”
Throughout the interrogation, Aminata Diallo would have swept away the incriminating evidence presented to her. His research on how to break a kneecap? “I know how to break a kneecap, so I’m not going to do the research on how to break a kneecap,” she allegedly retorted. A supposed cousin involved in the case? “I don’t know this imaginary cousin.” What about his rivalry with Kheira Hamraoui? “I think there was room for two, my situation was excellent at PSG, the club wanted to extend me, so there was no sporting motive to do that [aggression editor’s note] at that time.”
After choosing to exercise her right to silence, following several pressing questions, Aminata Diallo then found herself facing the investigating judge who indicted her for “aggravated violence” as well as “criminal association “and placed under judicial control. Still according to information from Le Parisien, the ex-PSG player would then have proclaimed her innocence: “I am not the sponsor of this expedition.” According to the Ile-de-France daily, the judge tried in vain to push Aminata Diallo to her limits. Without success. A final question would then have been asked to the former player: “Was Kheira Hamraoui a friend?” To which the interviewee would have replied: “She was a club colleague with whom I had a good relationship.” She added, “Today it’s hard to tell if she was a friend or not. On November 4, yes, she was a friend.”
In a long article published on Monday, September 19, on the sidelines of the second police custody followed by the indictment of Aminata Diallo, Le Parisien revealed the details of the investigation report tracing the alleged origin of the conflict. “It has thus been irrefutably proven that Aminata Diallo harbored a real hatred against her club partner whom she considered an obstacle to her own sporting career”, the BRB investigators said in this report, which is based in part on telephone tapping of the player.
In the report, a “senseless criminal project” would be mentioned and Aminata Diallo portrayed as a player with the “unwavering will” to “succeed as quickly as possible in her career”, nourishing in passing a “long sporting jealousy” for Kheira Hamraoui, whom she regularly nicknames “the other whore”. One of Aminata Diallo’s relatives, nicknamed “Jaja”, is also presented as a possible henchman, capable of executing a violent plan against Kheira Hamraoui: “If I were bad, jealous and calculating like her … I tell him destroy it, he destroys it,” Amina Diallo reportedly said.
The report would also reveal inappropriate remarks towards the leaders of PSG. “I’m going to become unscrupulous now! I need no one but to fuck my job for free I don’t accept… I wish them all harm, I only need my loved ones”, would have said Amina Diallo. “I should have made it cut his legs off,” she also said of a dispute between her and an ex-club coach.
As the investigation continues, this report would also highlight, according to Le Parisien, evocative searches that the PSG community would have carried out on Google, such as “breaking a kneecap” and “cocktail of dangerous drugs”.
The Versailles PJ document would also dwell on the four men indicted with Aminata Diallo in mid-September. During their hearings, the latter would have explicitly designated her as the sponsor of the punitive expedition of November 4. One of the alleged attackers reportedly said he received 500 euros for his participation in the ambush. In addition to telephone tapping, exploration of the Snapchat application and the Waze application on the suspects’ telephones would suggest a precise organization on the evening of the events, with in particular an appointment given in Chatou, at the precise moment when Diallo, Hamraoui and Karchaoui were leaving the restaurant.
One of the suspects reportedly reported a heated telephone conversation between one of the attackers and “a friend” of Aminata Diallo, just after the ambush. “The little one and his buddy then put on a balaclava then it was the little one who took an iron bar and they went out in the direction of the players (…). It lasted two or three minutes then they came back running. At that moment, the player’s friend called the little de Villeneuve back, telling him that what they had done was not enough and that they had to go back to break his knee. Another suspect claims to have heard this same “little” retort: ??”How is that not well done? How can she still walk? I gave a good blow to the knee. Normally she won’t be able to play tomorrow’s game as expected !” The author of the blows, the 5th man of the expedition, would have been arrested and placed in police custody on September 27.
At the end of September, RMC revealed that one of the suspects would have mentioned to the investigators a person from Aminata Diallo’s entourage as an intermediary, one of the alleged attackers having been, according to him, “in contact with an individual who presented himself as a friend of Aminata Diallo’s cousin”. The objective of Kheira Hamraoui’s attack is clear there according to him: “He wanted us to pretend to attack Aminata Diallo and to attack Kheira Hamraoui. I think it was for a match, think to have understood the young man. Aminata, she wanted to play but she had not been chosen so it was necessary to hurt Kheira Hamraoui so that she could not play”, he would have further specified to the police. This 5th suspect had been arrested and placed in police custody on Tuesday, September 27, according to information confirmed by the Versailles prosecutor’s office. In detail, investigators from the banditry repression brigade (BRB) of the Versailles judicial police had identified and housed this young man in his twenties in Villeneuve-Saint-Georges, in Val-de-Marne. .
The PSG, aware of the case, had produced a press release in November 2021, taking note of the police custody of Aminata Diallo. “Paris Saint-Germain takes note of the detention this morning of Aminata Diallo by the SRPJ of Versailles within the framework of the procedure opened following an attack last Thursday evening against players of the Club. Paris Saint-Germain condemns the violence committed in the strongest terms. Since Thursday evening, November 4, the Club has taken all necessary measures to guarantee the health, well-being and safety of its players. Paris Saint-Germain is collaborating with the Versailles SRPJ to shed light on the facts. The Club is attentive to the progress of the procedure and will study the follow-up to be given.” After his release, PSG again communicated, “the club remains at the side of its players to enable them to overcome this ordeal and quickly regain serenity. Paris-Saint-Germain reiterates its confidence in justice to make all the light on the events”.
A time protected by PSG, with a ban on speaking publicly in this affair, the two players finally saw their respective careers disrupted by the scandal. Kheira Hamraoui remained on the sidelines of the group, being the subject of tensions with other players after the affair and struggling to find playing time at the end of the 2021-2022 season as at the start of this season. In the absence of an agreement with another formation at the end of the transfer window, PSG chose to reintegrate into the professional workforce, announcing on September 20 its “availability” of coach Gérard Prêcheur.
Kheira Hamraoui spoke at length about her assault and its consequences to BFM TV on September 23, 2022. The PSG player, who had already spoken about the case via social networks but never on television, deplored the relentlessness she would have shown, asking to simply “play football again” and that “everything goes back to how it was”.
Arrived at the end of the contract at PSG at the end of the 2021-2022 season, Aminata Diallo has not been renewed and has been without a club since the summer of 2022. At the time of writing these lines, the Parisian club had not reacted to the second police custody of his former player.
The investigators would have established a link between the Mbappé clan and Aminata Diallo, in particular via exchanges between Fayza Lamari, the mother of Kylian Mbappé, and the duo Diallo – César M., the former adviser of the player. Fayza Lamari would have met Aminata Diallo in particular as part of a documentary project on the Hamraoui affair, carried by Zebra Valley, Kylian Mbappé’s production company.
According to a telephone tap, an ex-journalist in the circle close to Mbappé also suggested to Aminata Diallo that Mbappé’s mother could have supported his contract extension with the leaders of the capital club. “I confirm informal and disinterested exchanges with the leaders of PSG. When I learned that PSG did not wish to offer Aminata a new contract for reasons probably related to the case, I distanced myself, “said explained the mother of Kylian Mbappé, in remarks reported by Le Parisien.
The name of Eric Abidal, figure of the French men’s football team in the early 2000s, was also mentioned for a time in the Hamraoui affair. According to several PSG players cited by Le Monde and L’Equipe in particular, Kheira Hamraoui would have indeed telephoned the former French international on November 5, 2021, the day after his attack. Why ? According to L’Equipe, this discussion was placed on loudspeaker, making it audible to two teammates of Kheira Hamraoui: Sakina Karchaoui and Aminata Diallo herself. During this exchange, Hamraoui would have asked Abidal if his wife was capable of hurting him. The player would have answered in the negative before discovering “with amazement” the violent aggression.
According to the account of the first hearings relayed once again by L’Equipe, Kheira Hamraoui and Aminata Diallo both confirmed that they heard the attackers say to the victim: “So, do we sleep with married men?” As a reminder, Eric Abidal was the sporting director of FC Barcelona from 2018 to 2020, a period during which Kheira Hamraoui wore the colors of the club. The French international played for the Catalan club from 2018 until the summer of 2021, when she joined PSG.
Implicated, Eric Abidal’s wife, Hayet Abidal, indicated at the end of 2021, through her lawyer, that she wanted to speak to the police “in order to put an end to the rumor”. “Hayet Abidal has nothing to do with these facts”, added Me Nicolas Cellupica, specifying that his client, a mother, would make “no comment on this file”.
