Two men given lengthy jail terms for murder of former Argentina rugby player Aramburú
Two men given lengthy jail terms for murder of former Argentina rugby player Aramburú
By NICOLAS VAUX-MONTAGNY and JEROME PUGMIRE Fri, September 25, 2026 at 11:13 PM UTC
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PARIS (AP) — A Paris court sentenced Loïk Le Priol to 26 years in jail on Friday for murdering former Argentina rugby player Federico Martín Aramburú while Romain Bouvier received a 19-year sentence for attempted murder.
The verdicts were given at around 10:30 p.m. local time in the trial involving four people. The 32-year-old Le Priol and the 35-year-old Bouvier, who had links with France’s extreme right, were not charged with premeditation.
Lyson Rochemir, Le Priol’s girlfriend at the time of the shooting, was handed a six-month full jail term with a further 2 1/2-year suspended sentence for concealing and destroying evidence. She was acquitted of complicity in attempted murder. A fourth person in the trial was given a three-year suspended sentence.
The 42-year-old Aramburú, who played 22 times for Argentina, was killed in March 2022 when leaving a bar in Paris, along with his friend Shaun Hegarty, an ex-New Zealand rugby player. They were former clubmates at Biarritz and traveled to the capital to attend a Six Nations Championship match.
On Wednesday, Advocate General Philippe Courroye requested a 27-year prison sentence for Le Priol — who fired the fatal shots — and 20 years for Bouvier, who shot the rugby player twice without killing him. Le Priol was charged with murder, while Bouvier was charged with attempted murder.
According to an investigation into the death, the two rugby players had earlier sat at a table in a bar in Paris' Latin Quarter next to another table occupied by far-right activists including Le Priol and Bouvier. The groups got into an argument that erupted into a fight and Le Priol and Bouvier then went hunting for the rugby players in a Jeep driven by Rochemir.
The two main defendants admitted involvement in the deadly shooting but denied it was premeditated, claiming they acted out of fear, with Bouvier saying he intended to only shoot at the ground. Neither of the rugby players was armed.
In his closing statements to the court, Bouvier said he “would never find words adequate to the suffering and dignity of Mr. Aramburú's family.”
“I hope that one day the family will find the strength to forgive me, and that I will forgive myself,” Le Priol said.
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Courroye told the court that Bouvier and Le Priol “meted out their own brand of private justice — one in which the death penalty had not been abolished.”
Aramburú, married and the father of three, settled in the French Basque Country at the end of his career in 2012, having played for Biarritz, Perpignan, Dax and Scotland’s Glasgow.
He helped Argentina finish third at the 2007 Rugby World Cup, scoring a try against France as Argentina won the third-place match. The Argentine Rugby Union has also called for justice.
Shooting and aftermath
Surveillance footage showed Aramburú and Hegarty walking down the street toward their hotel following the brawl, with Hegarty stopping to get some ice cubes to relieve the injuries sustained during the fight.
Bouvier was the first to spot them while he was in the Jeep with Rochemir. He fired four shots at Aramburú, two of which struck and wounded him. Le Priol then arrived running and, after a brief fight, fired six shots into his back. Four hit him, two of them fatally. The Argentine collapsed into the arms of Hegarty.
Rochemir was arrested on the same day, March 19. Le Priol was arrested three days later while attempting to cross the border between Hungary and Ukraine. Bouvier was arrested on Oct. 23, 2022, in Sablé-sur-Sarthe, in Western France.
A former soldier, Le Priol served in Mali, Niger and Djibouti, where he allegedly strangled and assaulted a prostitute.
He was repatriated to France in 2015 because of a post-traumatic disorder, and his military contract was terminated in 2017 after he was charged with aggravated assault in connection with an October 2015 incident involving the former president of a far-right student association.
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See AP’s full rugby coverage here
Source: “AOL Sports”
