Since football now seems to consider itself a moral arbiter in all things, expect more boos in Atlanta for Morocco defender Achraf Hakimi when his team play Haiti on Wednesday.
He faced the same wrath of supporters when Morocco faced Scotland last week, hours after being ordered to stand trial on rape charges by an appeal court in Versailles. This new legal development came after several years in which he has used his public profile to attack his accuser, in a way that has been far from attractive.
From the moment Hakimi received a phone call telling him he was being investigated for rape in 2023 – the defender was preparing to attend the FIFA Football Awards event as a ‘Best Player’ alongside Julian Alvarez and Neymar, at the time – he has allowed his lawyers to assume a very aggressive stance. Team Hakimi claimed he was the victim of an ‘attempted extortion’ – a grave allegation which his accuser, 24 at the time of the alleged incident, emphatically denies.
Hakimi’s importance to Morocco cannot be overstated. The 27-year-old right back is captain, with 98 caps and 11 goals for his country. He played in every World Cup match in Qatar four years ago as they reached the last four, beating Spain and Portugal en route to a semi-final defeat by France. He is also a back-to-back Champions League winner with Paris Saint-Germain.
Kylian Mbappe, a former PSG team-mate, has spoken for him, as has Morocco manager Mohamed Ouahbi, here at the World Cup. Last year, Hakimi appeared on the Canal+ programme Clique where he used the interview to say how innocent he was.
The case is a complicated one, with a process of claim and counterclaim which the British judicial system would have tested first in court, preventing the gaslighting and accusations we have seen. The British law of sub judice – banning public commentary to preserve the court’s impartiality – does not apply in France, where a magistrate sits in judgment.
Morocco captain Achraf Hakimi has been ordered to stand trial on rape charges by an appeal court in Versailles
Since being told he was being investigated for rape in 2023, Hakimi has allowed his lawyers to assume a very aggressive stance and he’s claimed to be the victim of an ‘attempted extortion’
Hakimi is captain of Morocco and has won 98 caps, scoring 11 times
The allegations centre on the woman’s claim that she ‘met’ Hakimi in January 2023 through an exchange of Instagram messages over two weeks, then went to his home in the early hours of a Saturday morning, arriving at 1.15am in a taxi he had provided.
She claims the player kissed her in his living room, touched her without her consent, then sexually assaulted her, despite them having had ‘a long discussion’ about her unwillingness. She says she managed to push him away and text a friend, who came to pick her up. Hakimi denies any wrongdoing.
An investigation into the case by L’Equipe has established that the accuser contacted police two days later to report the episode to help ensure ‘other girls’ would not go through a similar one. She refused to press charges or undergo a physical examination, fearing the consequences for herself and claiming she didn’t want to damage Hakimi’s reputation.
But nine years after the #MeToo movement, public policy in France – as well as Britain – has changed, and prosecutors take up cases of alleged sexual violence on their own initiative, even if there is no formal complaint. They pressed to interview her.
The situation escalated when news of the complaint against Hakimi was leaked to French newspaper Le Parisien. The complainant and her friend, with whom she had been in contact via WhatsApp throughout that evening, were finally interviewed by police.
L’Equipe has shown that the woman passed police screenshots of real-time messages she had sent to her friend, suggesting an escalating situation in Hakimi’s living room.
These included: ‘It’s very serious’ (1:50 am); ’I’m going home – it’s very serious,’ (2:18 am); ‘Please, hurry, it’s very serious, he’s raping me, I swear on my mother’s life’; and ‘I can’t leave’ (2:22 am).
But when police asked to see her friend’s phone, too, it revealed messages the complainant had not shared with police. ‘Ah, I’m freaking out lol,’ she texted, just before arriving at the flat. The friend suggested she arrive at the flat in ‘femme fatale mode’ and told the woman to ‘try to get the codes and everything’ – one of several references to obtaining security codes to Hakimi‘s flat.
Earlier on the night in question, Hakimi had spent time with another woman whom he’d met on the exclusive social media network Raya
Hakimi is a back-to-back Champions League winner with Paris Saint-Germain
The captain has support among the Morocco fans as he says he is ‘waiting impatiently’ to clear his name
Of course, neither these messages, nor others not initially shared with police which suggest the woman was physically attracted to Hakimi, legitimise someone having a man force himself on her.
The same can be said for evidence, uncovered by L’Equipe, which suggests that the woman’s friend asked her which messages she had shown to the police, ‘so I can delete some of them’. But the case is still not totally unpacked.
When the presiding magistrate asked the woman to explain what she was referring to that was ‘very serious’, she said she couldn’t remember. Her explanation of messaging the friend to say ‘he’s raping me’ was also ambiguous. ‘It’s just a figure of speech,’ she has told the judge. ‘It couldn’t have been during the incident at all; there wasn’t a single time I picked up my phone while it was happening.’
Mbappe publicly supporting his friend Hakimi in the case has brought more hate on the woman. Hakimi – who says he is ‘waiting impatiently’ to clear his name – had spent the night in question with another woman whom he’d met on the exclusive social media network Raya. He turned to the woman at the centre of the case when the first had left. The first woman said: ‘When he realised that nothing sexual would happen between us, the evening was over.’
Yet none of this entitles football crowds to prejudge and trivialise such a case. It is for the French judicial system to comb over the details and make the considered, intelligent response – not a group of people who’ve washed up for a World Cup group stage match.
