Due to a comment he made on social media, Patrice Evra will go on trial at the Paris Police court.
According to reports, Patrice Evra will go on trial in a Paris court for prior homophobic remarks. In March 2019, following Manchester United’s victory over Paris Saint-Germain in the UEFA Champions League, Evra made a contentious post on his social media accounts.
Evra fired an abuse at former PSG player Jérôme Rothen following the French team’s loss with a statement that read: “Paris, you are a PD and a fag. The men are the ones who speak here.”
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According to a source from Le Parisien, the former Manchester United defender and captain will now be tried on Monday, October 17, 2022, in the Paris Police court for homophobic statements.
Evra later changed his remark and apologized, making sure he wasn’t homophobic.
However, the organizations Mousse and Stop Homophobia had filed a complaint, accusing him of “public insult to a group of individuals because of their sexual orientation,” with the backing of the anti-homophobia group Rouge Direct.
According to the newspaper, the former France international admitted to the judge that he had said the disputed comments, referring to the events that would have occurred on March 15, 2019, “the date of footballer Paul Pogba’s birthday.”
The investigating judge thinks that Patrice Evra “sworded in a private framework for the making of a video that was then disseminated on Snapchat without his knowledge” in his referral order to the trial dated May 5.
According to the article, Patrice Evra will now have to pay a €1,500 fine and appear before the Paris police court on Monday, October 17, as a result of the non-public insult that was brought up in court.
Patrice Evra would have been before the correctional court and would have been subject to a year in prison and a fine of $45,000 if the violation of public insult had been upheld.
The use of this homophobic epithet by a former French team captain is not unimportant, according to Etienne Deshoulières, an attorney for the groups.
This “reinforces the homophobic environment that exists in professional football.”
This trial is a crucial chance to declare that homophobia in football is no longer tolerated.
Additionally, Julien Pontes, the Collectif Rouge Direct’s spokesman, asserts that Evra’s trial would send a clear message just a few weeks before the World Cup in Qatar.