{"id":360658,"date":"2024-01-17T19:11:12","date_gmt":"2024-01-17T20:11:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/?p=360658"},"modified":"2024-01-17T22:03:01","modified_gmt":"2024-01-17T22:03:01","slug":"ballon-dor-winner-sues-minister-over-allegations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/?p=360658","title":{"rendered":"Ballon d'Or winner sues minister over allegations"},"content":{"rendered":"

Karim Benzema<\/a> has filed a defamation lawsuit against France's Interior Minister G\u00e9rald Darmanin, who accused the football<\/a> star of having links to the Muslim Brotherhood.<\/p>\n

Darmanin said in October that Benzema had \u201ca notorious link" to the Brotherhood \u2014 a pan-Arab Islamist group which came to power in Egypt following elections a year after the 2011 popular uprising \u2014 because Benzema posted a message of support online for the people of Gaza early into the Israel-Hamas war.<\/p>\n

In his complaint, which was filed with the Court of Justice of the Republic, Benzema firmly denied any links with the Muslim Brotherhood or any member of the organisation.<\/p>\n

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The CJR is a special court for cases targeting government ministers.<\/p>\n

\u201c(Despite this) the Interior Minister does not hesitate to drag my name through the mud for non-existent links with this organisation,\u201d Benzema said in his complaint, adding that he had been portrayed as being \u201cclose to the enemy or directly an enemy" and that it was a breach of his honour.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Benzema's lawyer Hugues Vigier told RTL radio that Benzema \u2014 who is muslim and now plays in the Saudi Arabian league for Al-Ittihad \u2014 was a victim of \u201cpolitical exploitation\u201d with considerable consequences to his family.<\/p>\n

The 36-year-old Benzema scored 37 goals in 97 appearances for France.<\/p>\n

He missed the 2022 World Cup because of injury, having won the coveted men's Ballon d'Or trophy that year.<\/p>\n

Benzema won the Champions League five times with Real Madrid and scored 354 goals for the Spanish club, putting him second all-time behind Cristiano Ronaldo (450).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Karim Benzema has filed a defamation lawsuit against France's Interior Minister G\u00e9rald Darmanin, who accused the football star of having links to the Muslim Brotherhood. […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":360662,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360658"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=360658"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360658\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":360665,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360658\/revisions\/360665"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/360662"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=360658"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=360658"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=360658"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}