BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — Two professional French rugby players were released from house arrest in Argentina on Monday but must remain in the country while they await trial on charges of aggravated sexual assault after an Argentine court order.
The court decision in Argentina’s western city of Mendoza, where the alleged assault occurred, marked a temporary victory for the two national team players, Hugo Auradou and Oscar Jegou, who were arrested in early July after a woman filed a complaint accusing them of repeatedly raping her. The 21-year-old athletes deny the allegations and maintain their innocence.
The chilling account provided last month by the 39-year-old Argentine woman has rattled the French rugby world and prompted a media firestorm in Argentina.
In a court document seen by The Associated Press, deputy criminal prosecutor Gonzalo Nazar said that the severity of the alleged crimes initially obliged the players' preventive detention. But that changed, he said, as the case appeared to weaken.
Justifying the release of the detainees, Nazar cites “notable contradictions, inconsistencies, gray areas and even insufficient explanations” in the woman’s testimony. He mentions questionable evidence presented before the court, including a light-hearted phone conversation that the victim had with her friend the day that she reported the incident to police in which she joked about the sexual violence she experienced.
The standard of evidence “necessary for the public prosecutor to request preventive detention of the accused has not been met," Nazar wrote in the court decision.
The athletes have admitted to having sex with the plaintiff — whom they met at a nightclub after winning a match against the Argentine Pumas in Mendoza — but insisted that the encounter was consensual.
After being arrested in Buenos Aires while their teammates continued their regional tour in Uruguay, Auradou and Jegou were moved to house arrest in Mendoza, where they have remained with ankle monitors for the past month.
In her criminal complaint, the woman alleged that Auradou and Jegou took her back to their five-star Mendoza hotel, subjected her to violent non-consensual sexual acts and prevented her from leaving their room. Her lawyer said she was later hospitalized for various injuries, including a bleeding ulcer, and received medical treatment for her state of shock and extreme stress.
Although freed from house arrest in Mendoza, the defendants still face restrictions as they await trial in the coming weeks, the court said. They can travel around Argentina but are barred from leaving the country and can't retrieve their passports.
The crime of aggravated sexual assault in Argentina carries a prison sentence of up to 20 years.
This story has been updated to correct the age of Hugo Auradou. He is 21 years old.
Follow AP’s coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america
French rugby players Oscar Jegou, center, and Hugo Auradou, left, are released from house arrest pending trial in Mendoza, Argentina, Monday, Aug. 12, 2024. The players were arrested following charges of sexual assault after France played Argentina in Mendoza on July 6. (AP Photo/Mariana Villa)
French rugby players Oscar Jegou, right, and Hugo Auradou are released from house arrest pending trial in Mendoza, Argentina, Monday, Aug. 12, 2024. The players were arrested following charges of sexual assault after France played Argentina in Mendoza on July 6. (AP Photo/Mariana Villa)
French rugby players Oscar Jegou, center, and Hugo Auradou, back, are released from house arrest, pending trial in Mendoza, Argentina, Monday, Aug. 12, 2024. The players were arrested following charges of sexual assault after France played Argentina in Mendoza on July 6. (AP Photo/Mariana Villa)
FILE - Police escort French rugby players Oscar Jegou, second from right, and Hugo Auradou, right, from jail after they were given house arrest in Mendoza, Argentina, July 17, 2024. The players were arrested following charges of sexual assault after France played Argentina in Mendoza on July 6. (AP Photo/Mariana Villa, File)
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — Former President Donald Trump wasn’t harmed in Sunday’s apparent assassination attempt as he golfed near his Florida club. But the second attack on his life in barely two months is likely to further unsettle an election cycle already marked by upheaval.
The man suspected in the incident, Ryan Wesley Routh, camped outside the golf course in West Palm Beach with food and a rifle for nearly 12 hours, according to court documents filed Monday. He is accused of lying in wait for the former president before a Secret Service agent opened fire, thwarting the potential attack.
Here are five things to know about what happened and where the investigation stands:
Routh, 58, faces charges of possessing a firearm despite a prior felony conviction and of possessing a firearm with an obliterated serial number. Additional charges are possible.
The suspect lived in North Carolina for most of his life before moving in 2018 to Kaaawa, Hawaii. He and his son operated a company building sheds, according to an archived version of the webpage for the business.
Routh appeared briefly in federal court in West Palm Beach on Monday. He had frequently posted on social media about the war in Ukraine and had a website where he sought to raise money and recruit volunteers to go to Kyiv to join the fight against the Russian invasion.
“Fight and die to stop aggression,” he posted on X in February 2023 about Ukraine. “Everyone should be outraged and helping.” In a video circulating online Routh said, “This is about good versus evil.”
He also wrote separately on X, “I am going to fight and die for Ukraine,” and he even traveled there.
Video shot by The Associated Press showed Routh at a small demonstration in Kyiv’s Independence Square in April 2022, two months after Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an invasion of the country. A placard he was holding said: “We cannot tolerate corruption and evil for another 50+ years. End Russia for our kids.” Routh wore a blue vest with the U.S. flag on the back.
That same day, Routh also visited a makeshift memorial to “Foreigners killed by Putin.”
But Routh never served in the Ukrainian army or worked with its military, said Oleksandr Shahuri of the Foreigners Coordination Department of the Ukrainian Ground Forces Command.
Routh's politics, meanwhile, don't appear consistently aligned to one party or the other.
In June 2020, he offered a post on X directed at then-President Trump to say he would win reelection if he issued an executive order for the Justice Department to prosecute police misconduct. That year, he also posted in support of the Democratic presidential campaign of then-U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, who has since left the party and endorsed Trump.
However, in recent years, his posts suggest he soured on Trump, and he expressed support for President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.
In July, following the assassination attempt on Trump in Pennsylvania, Routh urged Biden and Harris to visit those wounded in the shooting at the hospital and to attend the funeral of a former fire chief killed at the rally.
Voter records show he registered as an unaffiliated voter in North Carolina in 2012, most recently voting in person during the state’s Democratic Party primary in March 2024. Federal campaign finance records show Routh made 19 small political donations totaling $140 since 2019 using his Hawaii address through a political action committee that supports Democratic candidates.
Records show that while living in Greensboro, North Carolina, Routh had multiple run-ins with law enforcement. The top FBI official in the Miami, Jeffrey B. Veltri, said Routh has numerous felony charges for stolen goods between 1997 and 2010. He also was the subject of a closed investigation in 2019 when someone reported he was in possession of a firearm despite his felony convictions, but Veltri said the tipster would not confirm making the report.
Routh was convicted in 2002 of possessing a weapon of mass destruction, according to online North Carolina Department of Adult Correction records.
Authorities spotted a firearm poking out of shrubbery on the West Palm Beach golf course around 400 to 500 yards from where Trump was playing. As the former president was moving through the fifth hole's fairway, an agent who was visually sweeping the area of the sixth hole's green saw the subject, armed with what he perceived to be a rifle, and immediately discharged his firearm, said acting Director Ronald Rowe Jr. of the U.S. Secret Service.
Rowe said Routh “did not have a line of sight to the former president” and did not fire at Secret Service agents before fleeing.
Routh sped away before being captured in a neighboring county. Body camera footage of Routh’s arrest showed him walking backward with his hands over his head on the side of a road before being handcuffed and led away.
The suspect is believed to have been positioned at the tree line of the golf course from about 1:59 a.m. to 1:31 p.m. Sunday. A digital camera, a loaded SKS-style rifle with a scope and a plastic bag containing food were recovered from the area.
Trump’s protective detail has been higher than some of his peers because of his high visibility and his campaign to seek the White House again. His security was bolstered days before the July 13 assassination attempt in Pennsylvania because of a threat on Trump’s life from Iran, U.S. officials said.
Trump initially posted, “I AM SAFE AND WELL!” and subsequently praised the Secret Service for protecting him.
But the former president pivoted Monday to the politics surrounding the incident, claiming — without evidence — that Biden and Harris comments that he is a threat to democracy had inspired the latest attempt on his life.
“Their rhetoric is causing me to be shot at," Trump told Fox News Digital. In a subsequent post on his social media site Monday, Trump wrote that the left “has taken politics in our Country to a whole new level of Hatred, Abuse, and Distrust.” He said “it will only get worse,” then veered into comments about immigration, even though there is no evidence immigrants were involved in the incident.
The former president made those comments despite his own long history of inflammatory campaign rhetoric and advocacy for jailing or prosecuting his political enemies.
Harris, Trump's Democratic opponent in the presidential election, posted on X that she was "glad he is safe. Violence has no place in America.”
Biden also avoided politics in his reaction. He said Monday that the Secret Service “needs more help” and urged Congress to provide additional resources to help the agency.
“America has suffered too many times the tragedy of an assassin’s bullet,” Biden said at the start of an address to the National HBCU Week Conference in Philadelphia. “It solves nothing. It just tears the country apart. We must do everything we can to prevent it and never give it any oxygen.”
Trump hasn't announced any changes to his schedule and spoke live on X on Monday night from his Mar-a-Lago resort.
Still, a presidential race already rocked by Biden giving up his reelection bid and the first attack on Trump now is being further shaped by a second one. The leaders of a congressional bipartisan task force investigating Trump's Pennsylvania shooting said they have requested a briefing by the Secret Service.
“We are thankful that the former President was not harmed, but remain deeply concerned about political violence and condemn it in all of its forms,” Reps. Mike Kelly, R-Pa., and Jason Crow, D-Colo., said in a statement.
Weissert reported from Washington.
Ryan Wesley Routh holds up a banner during a rally in central Kyiv, Ukraine on Saturday April 30, 2022. (AP Photo/Alex Babenko)
Photos that show an AK-47 rifle, a backpack and a Go-Pro camera on a fence outside Trump International Golf Club taken after an apparent assassination attempt of Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump, are displayed during a news conference at the Palm Beach County Main Library, Sunday. Sept. 15, 2024, in West Palm Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Stephany Matat)
This photo provided by the Martin County Sheriff's Office shows Sheriff's vehicles surrounding an SUV on the northbound I-95 in Martin County on Sunday, Sept. 15, 2024. (Martin County Sheriff's Office via AP)
