The Bruges court in Belgium will rule on October 19 on the admissibility of the rape complaint filed by Belgian-Dutch actress Sand Van Roy against French filmmaker Luc Besson.
The decision, supposed to take place on Wednesday morning, has been postponed for a week, a spokeswoman for the court and a lawyer in the case told AFP, without further details.
Read alsoActress Sand Van Roy files a rape complaint against Luc Besson in Belgium
Sand Van Roy, who will be 35 on Sunday, accuses Luc Besson, 63, of having assaulted her in a Parisian palace in May 2018, when this ex-model had just collaborated with the director of "
Big blue
" and the "
Fifth Element
".
She made an appearance in his film "
Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets
", released in 2017. The filmmaker denies the accusations.
In parallel with the legal action brought in France, where the Paris Court of Appeal confirmed in May the "dismissal" order
issued
in favor of Mr. Besson, a complaint was filed in April in Bruges on behalf of of Mrs Van Roy by her Belgian lawyer Joris Van Cauter.
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This lawyer says he relies on the nationality of his client to seize the Belgian justice which is, according to him, legitimate to carry out investigations.
"
We believe that the investigation in France was not a real investigation, we did not do what must be done
," also argued Me Van Cauter last spring.
For their part, Luc Besson's lawyers have been denouncing for months "
a diversionary operation
" on the part of the complainant, after the setback suffered before the French courts.
According to them, the Bruges public prosecutor's office also ruled inadmissible the complaint with civil action filed in Belgium by Ms. Van Roy, during a closed-door hearing held on September 28 at the court of the Flemish city.