By Victor Kanayo
Football star Benjamin Mendy has been cleared of sex offences.
The latest judgement ended a three-year court ordeal faced by the former Manchester City player.
Shortly after, the France footballer broke down in tears.
Mendy, 28, put his head on his knees and wiped away tears on hearing the verdict at the end of the three-week trial at Chester Crown Court in northwest England.
The jury of six men and six women took around three hours and 15 minutes to reach their not guilty verdicts on one count of rape and another of attempted rape.
The star footballer, who would have faced a lengthy jail term if convicted, had previously being cleared in January of six counts of rape and one of sexual assault following a six-month trial.
But jurors in that trial had been unable to reach a verdict on two other counts resulting in a retrial.
Mendy, whose contract with Manchester City expired at the end of June, had denied all the charges against him.
He was accused alongside Louis Saha Matturie, 41, an alleged “fixer”, who was found not guilty by the jury at the earlier trial of three counts of rape relating to two teenagers.
Jurors also failed to reach verdicts on three counts of rape and three counts of sexual assault against Matturie by five other women.
He faces a separate retrial later this year.
The prosecution had alleged that Mendy was a sexual “predator” who raped or sexually assaulted young women procured by Matturie at parties at his luxury home south of Manchester.
But Mendy denied ever forcing any woman into sex and both said any sexual activity they had with women was consensual.
