The Paris Court of Appeal on Monday confirmed the sentencing of Malian international Sochaux (L2) Sambou Yatabaré to one year in prison for violence committed in 2017, a judicial source told AFP on Tuesday.
The 34-year-old footballer had been imprisoned for a fortnight in Februaryfollowing the conviction at first instance by the court of Bobigny, in the Paris region, for hitting a plainclothes police officer during an altercation in a parking lot at Roissy Charles-de-Gaulle airport. He was then released under judicial supervision by the Paris Court of Appeal pending his appeal hearing, which was held in mid-April.
No sentence adjustment was pronounced with the judgment on Monday and the sportsman will have to go before a sentence enforcement judge, said a source familiar with the matter. On June 28, 2017, the Malian international born in France and a policeman from the Border Police (PAF) – who was not on duty – found themselves in an airport parking lot: a fishtail on the he nearby highway, for which they blamed themselves, had set fire to the powder. In the altercation, Yatabaré, then midfielder of Werder Bremen (Germany), had hit the policeman in the face, touching his optic nerve and causing him 21 days of total incapacity for work (ITT).
