A year in prison for domestic violence, but no return to prison: justice offered Mohamed Haouas a final chance on Tuesday. But not Clermont nor the XV of France, who refused to allow the Montpellier pillar to wear their colors. “Do you realize? He did four days in prison and we gave him another chance. This time, if he doesn’t take it, we won’t be able to do anything more”, reacted, visibly relieved, the lawyer for the Montpellier player, Me Marc Gallix.
The Montpellier Criminal Court therefore did not follow the prosecutor, who had requested a total of 18 months in prison with a warrant of committal and therefore continued detention, against the front line of the MHR, tried for hitting his wife on Friday, after seeing her smoke a cigarette in front of the mall where she works.
Mohamed Haouas remanded in custody
The 29-year-old player, detained pending his trial in immediate appearance, certainly went back to prison at the end of the hearing, but for the formalities of release. “Tonight, all his friends, even his wife, will pick him up from prison,” commented Me Gallix.
“Shocked” by the violence exerted on her by her husband – for the first time, she said at the hearing -, she had not lodged a complaint. But she filed a civil action, in order to signify that she “does not endorse” her gesture. And she wants to “find him this evening, with the children”, in order “to be able to discuss in the intimacy of the couple”, explained his lawyer after the judgment, saying he was “satisfied” with the court decision.
The French “will not be able to wear, on the ground, the colors of the club”
On the sporting level, the Montpellier player is now without an employer, the Clermont club, which he was to join for three years from July 1, having finally terminated his contract. Mohamed Haouas “will not be able to wear the colors of the club on the field”, announced the ASM as soon as the judgment was announced, considering that the facts alleged against the international were “unacceptable”.
“If he had stayed in prison, Clermont would have noted that he did not show up for training on July 1, so there would have been no compensation to be paid. Now (…) they will have to pay him a fairly high compensation, since he had an expected salary of just over 300,000 euros per year”, declared shortly before Me Gallix, anticipating the decision of the Auvergne club.
A cross on the World Cup
Selected 16 times in the jersey of the France team, the Montpellier colossus (1.85 m, 123 kg) will also miss the 2023 World Cup in France (September 8-October 28). “The behavior of Mohammed Haouas is inadmissible and incompatible” with a selection in Blue, thus struck the FFR in a press release, taking note of the player’s conviction. Excluded against Scotland in February, after a first red card received against this same team in 2020, Mohamed Haouas was already in the hot seat sportingly. But the suspense over his participation in the World Cup has definitely ended, a few days before the announcement of the list of Blues selected to prepare for the competition, by Fabien Galthié on June 21.
“The problem is that she lied to me, (…) I did not control myself. I made a film for myself”, had tried to justify himself at the hearing the player, returning to the blows to his wife late Friday afternoon. “I really blame myself, (…) she’s my wife, I love you, I love you,” insisted the player, turning to his wife, with whom he had two children. As for the blows, it was only “a little tripping”, to make her fall, then “a little slap, like that”, he had described, assuring that “never in life” he would not would start again and saying that he was ready to take care to learn to control himself. The MHR player had already been sentenced in February 2022 to an 18-month suspended prison sentence, for burglaries of tobacco shops in Montpellier, in 2014. On May 12, during a second trial, for his participation in a violent fight on January 1, 2014, the prosecution requested a two-year suspended sentence. The deliberation in this case is expected on June 30.