While suspicions of trafficking around Éric Abidal's liver transplant have resumed with a vengeance, after a new report from the Barcelona justice system released in April, his wife Hayet spoke at length about the case, in an interview. on Youtube this Sunday.
Asked by presenter Magali Berdah, she returned to the two complicated operations of her husband, with whom she is in the process of divorce, and the accusations surrounding it.
"The first operation, it was he who pulled me up, so we were both collapsed," she says, tears in her eyes.
While still playing at FC Barcelona, Abidal underwent surgery for the first time for a liver tumor in 2011. "I discovered that I had the same blood group as him, I offered to give him a part of my liver but the doctors told us that was not possible having children together.
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Abidal's health, who was then battling cancer, had deteriorated rapidly, forcing him to return to the operating room.
“One day one of his doctors called me and said, 'Hayet, the tumor is growing too fast, we need a living donor.
It is absolutely necessary that you contact all his family and that you find a donor, ”she continues.
I told myself that I had to be strong and save my husband.
I had the help of his mother who helped me with the research.
It was at this time that the Abidal family would have come into contact with Gérard Armand, Eric's supposed cousin, for a transplant, in April 2012.
“I offered him part of my liver”
“I contacted him.
His mother had obtained his mother's number for me, continues Hayet Abidal.
He was ready right away.
He really wanted to help his cousin and told me that he was not only doing it for Eric but also for himself, he was coming out of a depression and felt the need to make a gesture of kindness.
The link between Abidal and Armand has however since been called into question on several occasions, undermining this version.
Telephone tapping of Sandro Rosell, former president of Barcelona, first raised suspicions about an illegal liver purchase.
In early April, the Spanish site El Confidencial in turn revealed that there would be no family relationship between the two men, according to analyzes by the National Institute of Toxicology.
Since then, the investigation has continued.
Armand, contacted by Le Parisien, recently reaffirmed that he was Abidal's first cousin, even though the two men got angry when the case became public.
“I was taken for a fool”
“It's starting to get really tiring, it affects us all, these are very serious charges.
My daughters receive messages calling their father a murderer, when everything is completely false, she laments.
I was with Eric and his cousin from start to finish, I was with them when they entered the operating room.
[…] I saw them go into the OR, I saw them come out, I saw the nurses take out his stitches.
“About the quarrel between the two cousins, she evokes” too insistent requests “, to which” it was necessary to put a brake “, without saying more.
During the interview, Hayet Abidel also returned to the affair between her husband and Paris Saint-Germain player Kheira Hamraoui, which came out in the press after the latter's attack in November.
“I learned it like everyone else, that's the sad thing.
I had my husband next to me and this media bomb that exploded worldwide, she explains.
What saddens me the most in this story is not the infidelity, we can forgive.
But I was taken for a fool.
I was everywhere, deceived, dirtied, humiliated and I learned everything from the press.
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