Famous and controversial Congolese musician Koffi Olomide has been handed a two-year suspended prison sentence for the statutory rape of one of his former dancers when she was 15.
He was handed a two-year suspended jail sentence by a court in France in absentia, as he failed to turn up.
A suspended sentence is a legal term for a judge’s delaying of a defendant’s serving of a sentence after they have been found guilty, in order to allow the defendant to perform a period of probation.
The ruling means the Congolese star only faces arrest if he commits further offences. Olomidé, 62, was ordered to pay 5,000 euros ($5,700; £4,300) in damages to the former dancer.
The court in Nanterre, outside Paris, also ordered him to pay a fine of the same amount for helping three women enter France illegally.
Olomidé’s lawyer has hailed the ruling as a victory, telling journalists it would result in the withdrawal of the star’s international arrest warrant.
Olomide went on trial after four former dancers claimed he sexually assaulted them several times between 2002 and 2006.
The assaults allegedly happened in the Democratic Republic of Congo as well as in France, including at a villa outside Paris where the women said they were held against their will.
Prosecutors at his trial in Nanterre, outside Paris, had sought a seven-year prison sentence but the court dismissed the assault and kidnapping charges.