The charges date back to 2011 and were tried ten years later… Former footballer Tony Vairelles, a footballer who played eight times for the France team between 1998 and 2000, famous for his “mule cup” and who had played in particular for Lens, is appearing on appeal before the Nancy Court of Appeal from Tuesday. Just a year after being sentenced with three of his brothers for violence against security guards at the exit of a nightclub.
In October 2011, Tony and his brothers were accused of having opened fire and injured three guards in the parking lot of a nightclub in Essey-lès-Nancy (Meurthe-et-Moselle). After an investigation that lasted more than 10 years and saw four successive investigating judges, he was sentenced to five years in prison, two of which were suspended, by the Nancy Criminal Court in May 2022 for “violence in meetings, with premeditation and with a weapon”. His older brother, Fabrice Vairelles, had then received the same sentence. Jimmy and Giovan were sentenced to three years in prison, two of which were suspended.
A judgment “at the height of this file, a failed and pathetic investigation”, had then deplored Frédéric Berna, one of the lawyers of the siblings, at the end of the trial at first instance. The council had indeed indicated: “When, after 10 years of investigation, we send people to prison with a wet finger, I find that it is not very reassuring”, he had insisted. In 2022, Tony Vairelles returned to this conviction in an autobiographical book, “Balls in the center”.
Of “concern and misunderstanding”
Incarcerated for five months at the start of the investigation, Tony Vairelles has always proclaimed his innocence as well as that of his brothers. The Vairelles brothers “are all on the same wavelength. They indicate that they never fired on this car park, ”explained Virginie Barbosa, one of the family’s lawyers. Today, the brothers are simply waiting for “a better decision.” But there is concern and incomprehension on their part, especially since the first judges did not hear them, ”she added.
At first instance, the lawyers had pleaded the nullity of the procedure. What Me Barbosa will maintain this Tuesday against the Nancy Court of Appeal. “For this kind of file, we go to immediate appearance. It is inexplicable,” she added. Still at first instance, the three guards had also been prosecuted for violence in meetings with weapons, in particular “a tear gas canister, security barriers and a truncheon” and had finally been sentenced to suspended prison sentences: three months for one and four months for the other two.