• Technical challenge delays hearing of central charges
• Benzema lawyer says wait will be 'painful' for his client
The trial of the French footballers Franck Ribéry and Karim Benzema over claims they paid for sex with an underage call girl has been adjourned for procedural reasons until 2014.
Benzema, a Real Madrid striker, and Ribéry, a Bayern Munich winger, are to be tried on charges of paying Zahia Dehar, a prostitute, for sex in 2008 and 2009, when she was only 16 and then 17 years old – below the legal age of 18 for a prostitute in France. Neither footballer showed up in court on Tuesday.
The pair, both players in France's national squad, have been under investigation since 2010 over the affair. They risk up to three years in jail and fines of €45,000 if found guilty of soliciting the services of an underage prostitute.
At Tuesday's hearing, Ribéry's lawyer claimed a clause in France's penal code that forbids the soliciting of underage prostitutes was too vague to be used against his client. The court found his objection serious enough to adjourn the trial until 20 January 2014, allowing time for the issue to be put to a higher court and possibly passed to the supreme court.
In France, paying for sex is not illegal but underage prostitution is, along with pimping. Ribéry and Benzema's lawyers had called for the case to be dropped, saying their clients did not know Dehar was a minor.
According to court documents, the Algerian-born Dehar became a prostitute around 15 or 16 but would tell clients she was 18.
Ribéry's lawyer welcomed the trial's adjournment but Benzema's lawyer said the wait was "painful" for his client.