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Former Paris Saint-Germain women’s soccer star Aminata Diallo will stand trial on charges that she helped orchestrate a 2021 attack on a fellow French international, according to a court order issued Friday and seen by Agence France-Presse.
Diallo is charged with complicity in violence and criminal conspiracy. The investigating judge believes she ordered the assault on her former teammate Hamraoui and guided the attackers to the location where it took place.
Six other people will be tried alongside her. No trial date has been announced.
In November 2021, Hamraoui was attacked by two masked men who struck her on the knees with iron bars. The assault came after she rode home from a team dinner in a car with Diallo.
Hamraoui’s lawyers, Julia Minkowski and Said Harir, welcomed the decision in a statement. "After five long years of the case being investigated, it is a huge relief they have reached a conclusion, and soon there will be a trial," they said.
They said the "whole truth" would finally emerge in a case they described as extremely rare in soccer and in sports generally, adding that Hamraoui was subjected to an "unconscionable campaign of harassment" after the assault.
Diallo’s defense team said the investigation was unfair.
Romain Ruiz, one of her four lawyers, said that questions had never been raised about the methods used in the inquiry and that it was "peppered with false statements."
"It’s as if she has been crying in the desert for four years," Ruiz said. "We will call out her innocence till the final day of her trial."
Hamraoui lost a case against PSG last year at a labor court. She had sought €3.5 million ($4 million) in damages, alleging that the club failed to support her and that she was forced out after the assault.
She said she was "ostracized" on the field and in the locker room and endured harassment on social media.
She left PSG in 2023 and joined less prestigious clubs, first in Mexico and then in Saudi Arabia.
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