NEW DELHI: An Argentine court on Tuesday dismissed charges against four footballers accused of sexually abusing a journalist while they played for premier division club Velez Sarsfield last year. All four had been suspended from the Buenos Aires-based team after the claim. The case arose after a 24-year-old sports journalist alleged she was raped after being invited by Uruguay international Sebastian Sosa to a hotel room in Tucuman, Argentina in March last year.
She said Paraguayan midfielder Jose Florentin and Argentines Braian Cufre and Abiel Osorio were waiting in the room. The plaintiff said she felt dizzy after a few drinks, lay down on a bed, and was raped.
Cufre and Florentin had been charged with rape, Sosa as a secondary participant in the same crime, and Osorio with sexual abuse. But a judge in Tucuman in northwest Argentina dismissed the charges in a closed-door hearing Tuesday, after which the plaintiff told local media she intended to appeal.
Sosa plays for Juventud in Uruguay, Florentin and Cufre for Central Cordoba, and Osorio for Defensa y Justicia, also in Argentina. Agencies
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