It is a controversy which would have gone well with the XV of France a few days before the opening of the World Cup. Last Friday, the Montpellier rugby player Bastien Chalureau was selected among the 33 players of the France team to compete in the World Cup. The 2nd line replaces Paul Willemse, package due to injury.
If this is the sixth time since 2022 that the man has played for the XV of France, this selection for a leading event is particularly criticized. It is not his sporting qualities that are in dispute here, but his judicial past. The 31-year-old player was indeed sentenced in 2020 for racist violence. A judgment he appealed. Back on a case that embarrasses the highest sports authorities.
The origins of the controversy…
The facts date back to the night of January 30 to 31, 2020. That evening, Bastien Chalureau, who was then playing at Stade Toulousain, spent a particularly drunken evening in a bar in the Pink City. For a reason that remains to be specified, the colossus – 126 kilos, 2.02 meters – inveighs against two former rugby players, Yannick Larguet and Nassim Arif, as they return to the parking lot. “I heard a person shouting: ‘How are you googlings?’ (…) I asked if he was speaking to me. He continued his racist insults incessantly. I wanted to turn around and he landed a punch with all his might in the jaw,” Yannick Larguet said shortly after the events. La Depeche. Assessment: the perforated lip, four loose teeth and a whiplash. His friend, he comes out with a hematoma.
During the trial, Bastien Chalureau acknowledges the violence but firmly denies any racist insult. According to France 3, two of his friends, player of Castres, corroborated his declarations. Testimonies which did not prove to be decisive since he was sentenced, in November 2020, to six months in prison, suspended, the court retaining the racist nature of the attack. The prosecutor had asked for an eight-month suspended sentence. With his lawyer at the time, Me Antoine Tugas, Bastien Chalureau had appealed this decision. “He accepts a conviction for a fight, but to say that this fight is due to skin color or racial origin, he cannot accept it”, had declared the council to our colleagues from France 3 after his conviction.
Presumed innocent until convicted
The appeal trial, which should have been held at the end of March, is now scheduled for November 14, after the end of the World Cup. The defense had requested a dismissal due, in particular, to a transport strike and a shortage of fuel which made it difficult to move from Montpellier, where the player and his lawyer live, to Toulouse. “It is not us who set the hearing dates, it is the court, insists his new lawyer, Me David Mendel. We don’t suggest a date, we don’t give our preferences, we are told it’s such and such a day and that’s it. The World Cup and my client’s sporting imperatives have absolutely no play. »
Pending this trial, Bastien Chalureau is still presumed innocent. Indeed, in French law, a person is considered innocent until the conviction is final. For what ? Quite simply because it is not uncommon for the decisions on appeal to be different from those pronounced at first instance: a person declared guilty may be found innocent on appeal and vice versa. However, the latter prevails. Similarly, if there is an appeal in cassation, the presumption of innocence runs until the end of the procedure. “The whole purpose of this appeal trial is for us to demonstrate that there was no racist character in this attack,” insists his lawyer.
Controversy around his selection
Despite everything, the return to the France team of Bastien Chalureau is causing a stir. On Saturday, two deputies from La France insoumise, Thomas Portes and François Piquemal, announced their intention to “seize” the Minister of Sports, Amélie Oudéa-Castéra, to have this selection canceled. “We cannot accept today having a rugby player in the France team who has been convicted of racist acts”, insisted the first Sunday on RMC. The former captain of the XV of France Thierry Dusautoir also questioned the choice of Fabien Galthié in the “Canal Rugby Club”. “I am a little embarrassed because I am a friend of the victim and I have a fairly strong opinion on this case (…) Bastien Chalureau was selected in 2022. The facts precede his selection”, he commented.
Reactions in high places
Faced with the emerging controversy, the high authorities of sport quickly came out of their reserve. “I repeat with force and insistence that racism has no place in rugby. There are laws in France which guarantee the presumption of innocence, Bastien Chalureau has recognized acts of violence but has always denied racist remarks. An appeal is in progress, we must let justice do its work, ”assured Florian Grill, the president of the French Rugby Federation (FFR) during the press conference organized on Monday.
A position more or less identical to that of the Minister of Sports, Amélie Oudéa-Castéra. “Bastien Chalureau appealed his conviction by the Toulouse Criminal Court because he categorically denies, and still today, having made racist remarks. Since there is no final judgment, we must let justice do its job, respecting the presumption of innocence”. Bastien Chalureau could speak in the evening.