French footballer Benjamin Mendy will return to a UK courtroom on Monday for the start of his retrial for two alleged sexual offences, five months after a jury cleared him of multiple other counts.
Manchester City player Mendy, 28, will be back in the dock at Chester Crown Court in north-west England to face one count of rape and one of attempted rape.
Jurors in his last trial, which ended in January, failed to reach verdicts on the two charges involving two different women.
The panel of seven men and four women had cleared the defender of six other counts of rape and one of sexual assault against four women following a six-month trial.
The judge in January had immediately set a new trial date of Monday for the two counts on which the jury did not return a verdict.
Mendy, whose contract with Manchester City expires at the end of June and is reportedly not set to be renewed, has denied all the charges filed against him.
As the not-guilty verdicts were read out in court in January, Mendy covered his face with both hands, gently rocking back and forth.
Jenny Wiltshire, one of his lawyers, said at the time that the footballer was “delighted” that he had been acquitted of most of the charges he faced.
She added at the time that he looked forward to “clearing his name in relation to the other two charges so he can start rebuilding his life”.
Mendy was accused alongside Louis Saha Matturie, 41, an alleged “fixer”, who was found not guilty by the jury of three counts of rape relating to two teenagers.
Jurors also failed to reach verdicts on three counts of rape and three counts of sexual assault against Matturie by five other women.
He faces a separate retrial later in 2023.
The prosecution had alleged that Mendy was a sexual “predator” who raped or sexually assaulted young women procured by Matturie at parties at his luxury home south of Manchester.
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