Sport's Strangest Crimes BBC Podcasts

Maisie Adam tells the shocking story of jealousy, deceit and a brutal attack on a Paris Saint-Germain player that turned team-mates into the bitterest enemies.
Its a story that has gripped the French public since the arrest of PSG star Aminata Diallo in November 2021, suspected of ordering an attack on her team-mate and previously good friend, Kheira Hamraoui.
The accusation was Diallo wanted Hamraoui's place in the PSG starting line-up and so instructed a group of masked men to intercept the two players on a car journey home together and then assault Hamraoui, targetting her legs. And this is exactly how events played out.
Police investigations following the attack initially led them to Diallo's door although with too little evidence to charge her Diallo was released, presumed innocent. Instead the spotlight turned on the victim Hamraoui. Intimate details of her private life became public knowledge, including an affair with a married man who just happened to be a French football superstar.
Diallo returned to play alongside Hamraoui back at PSG – and at this point life became hell for Hamraoui. Team-mates, opponents and even her own fans, acting in sympathy with Diallo, targeted her with vicious verbal abuse.
It seemed everyone was against Hamraoui, including a controversial football agent, who would be accused of putting pressure on PSG to sell Hamraoui, and whose presence at training the player found intimidating.
The PSG coach found himself caught up in the fall-out too, taking phone calls urging him to drop Hamraoui, and also receiving thinly-veiled threats if he didn't. He would end up in a fight to clear his name from terrible accusations.

Then in September 2022, almost out of the blue, Daillo was re-arrested and this time the public prosecutor charged her. Statements from the men who carried out the attack identifying her as the mastermind along with months of secret phone surveillance convinced the police she was guilty. But is she?
With the case still to come to trial this podcast presents the evidence and hears the opinions from those closest to the case, and those who think she's innocent, and those who think she's guilty. So you can decide for yourself....
Narrator Maisie Adam
Interviews: Charlotte Harpur and Tom Williams
Voices for interviewees performed by: Janine George, Chyna Johnson, Tom Roberts and Colin Ryan.
Voice Artist audio recording: Thomas Hale at the Voiceover Gallery
Translation for the Aminatta Diallo interview: Laura Bennett
Script Consultant: Dave Bowler
Researchers: Rob Carroll, John Harrison and Janet Hughes
Assistant Producer: Jennifer Hanratty-Ball
Editor: Kevin Hinde
Assistant Commissioner for the BBC: Lizzi Doyle
Commissioning Executive: Stevie Middleton
Executive Producer: Craig South
Writer and Producer: Jonathan Sides
A PDI Media production for BBC Sounds and BBC Radio 5 Live

Maisie Adam introduces the story of a brutal attack at Paris Saint-Germain that turned close team-mates into bitter rivals just months after a holiday in paradise together.
Aminata Diallo and Kheira Hamraoui, both French international midfielders at PSG one of the biggest clubs in world football, appeared to be the best of friends. In the summer of 2021 they spent a vacation together in Zanzibar on the coast of East Africa, ahead of the new season.
Yet within months Diallo would be arrested, accused of involvement in organising an attack on Hamraoui that targetted her legs in a deliberate attempt to cause serious injury.
So who is Aminata Diallo? And why do the police believe she is guilty? And who is Kheira Hamraoui? And why has she become a target to be attacked in this way?
Was this assault motivated by jealousy and ruthless career ambition on the part of Diallo? Or is it connected to Hamraoui's soon to be exposed private life? And could this even be a potential miscarriage of justice? The investigation starts here....
With the case still to come to court this is the chance to hear evidence from those close to Diallo and Hamraoui – and make your own mind up. Like all good crime dramas, in this series we'll be examining the means, the motive and the opportunity.
Narrator Maisie Adam
Interviews: Charlotte Harpur and Tom Williams
Voices for interviewees performed by: Janine George, Chyna Johnson, Tom Roberts and Colin Ryan
Researchers: Rob Carroll and Janet Hughes
Assistant Producer: Jennifer Hanratty-Ball
Editor: Kevin Hinde
Assistant Commissioner for the BBC: Lizzi Doyle
Commissioning Executive: Stevie Middleton
Executive Producer: Craig South
Writer and Producer: Jonathan Sides
A PDI Media production for BBC Sounds and BBC Radio 5Live

Maisie Adam continues the incredible story of the organised hit on the French international footballer that took place in the leafy suburbs of Paris in November 2021.

Despite a flying start to the season for the PSG's women's team there are the first rumblings of discontent and trouble behind the scenes.

Head coach Didier Olle-Nicolle discovers Kheira Hamraoui in tears at the training ground and makes an alarming discovery about some mysterious and disturbing phonecalls made to her PSG team mates.

Then a team bonding night out ends in the bloody and brutal beating of Hamraoui by a group of masked men. As the player reflects on what happened in the days that follow her suspicions about the involvement of a team mate begin to form. But surely it can't be her? Or can it?

There are two sides to every story, more than one interpretation of every action and remember every crime needs means, motive and opportunity. So is everything as clear cut as it seems to Hamraoui?

With passionately put arguments from the legal teams representing the victim and the accused you'll have the chance to decide....


Narrator Maisie Adam
Interviews: Charlotte Harpur and Tom Williams
Voices for interviewees performed by: Janine George, Chyna Johnson, Tom Roberts and Colin Ryan
Researchers: Rob Carroll and Janet Hughes
Assistant Producer: Jennifer Hanratty-Ball
Editor: Kevin Hinde
Assistant Commissioner for the BBC: Lizzi Doyle
Commissioning Executive: Stevie Middleton
Executive Producer: Craig South
Writer and Producer: Jonathan Sides

A PDI Media production for BBC Sounds and BBC Radio 5Live

New episodes released on Wednesdays. If you’re in the UK, listen to Sport’s Strangest Crimes first on BBC Sounds. bit.ly/3DbxNzh

French international footballer Kheira Hamraoui is in shock after being dragged from the car of her PSG team-mate Aminata Diallo, and then having her legs beaten black and blue by a masked man. But who did it? And who planned it? And why?

Diallo goes unscathed during the attack, and takes her injured team-mate's place in the team to face Real Madrid in the Champions League. Playing a key role in a comprehensive 4-0 win life seems good for Diallo, with the extended run she'd craved now looking very likely. Until 6am the following morning that is - and an unexpected visit from the police.....

Diallo goes from a rocking, euphoric Parc des Princes to a miserable, foul-smelling cell at Versailles jail in a matter of hours. With echoes of the infamous fall out between American ice skaters Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan, the world's media pick up on the story, and two relatively little known footballers are about to acquire the worst possible notoriety.

Professional rivalry, jealousy, the desire to take a team-mate's place for both club and country is considered as a motive. But the players' private lives also come under scrutiny and investigators unearth a secret affair between Hamraoui and a married male ex-French football superstar, which becomes public knowledge – and with devastating consequences.

As Diallo is released without charge, but not without suspicion, Hamraoui is now subject to the full glare of media scrutiny and online judgement and abuse. Her personal nightmare is only just beginning.

Narrator Maisie Adam
Interviews: Charlotte Harpur and Tom Williams
Voices for interviewees performed by: Janine George, Chyna Johnson, Tom Roberts and Colin Ryan
Script consultant: Dave Bowler
Researchers: Rob Carroll and Janet Hughes
Assistant Producer: Jennifer Hanratty-Ball
Editor: Kevin Hinde
Assistant Commissioner for the BBC: Lizzi Doyle
Commissioning Executive: Stevie Middleton
Executive Producer: Craig South
Writer and Producer: Jonathan Sides

A PDI Media production for BBC Sounds and BBC Radio 5Live

With one player attacked and another player under suspicion of being involved in it, the return of both Kheira Hamraoui, the victim, and Aminata Diallo, the accused, to the PSG was never going to be straight forward.

Particularly as Diallo had close friends in the squad who felt a raging sense of injustice for their team-mate, who had faced the humiliation of arrest and 36 hours in jail before being released without charge.

And so it proved. The man tasked with trying to juggle and mend these fractured relationships was head coach Didier Olle-Nicolle. And what a time he had with a training regime to test his patience, his diplomacy skills - and his fitness.

For Hamraoui it was a brutal time. Not only facing hostility in her own dressing room, she also had to contend with abuse from her own club's supporters, as well as opposiition players making spiteful comments.

Into this toxic atmosphere emerged Cesar Mavacala, a controversial figure in French football, who, although not an official agent, represented the interests of several of PSG's top players.

A call out of the blue from Mavacala to Olle-Nicolle set in motion a chain of events that would ultimately have terrible repercussions, as he positioned himself firmly in support of Diallo and against Hamraoui.

Narrator Maisie Adam
Interviews: Charlotte Harpur and Tom Williams
Voices for interviewees performed by: Janine George, Chyna Johnson, Tom Roberts and Colin Ryan
Researchers: Rob Carroll and Janet Hughes
Assistant Producer: Jennifer Hanratty-Ball
Editor: Kevin Hinde
Assistant Commissioner for the BBC: Lizzi Doyle
Commissioning Executive: Stevie Middleton
Executive Producer: Craig South
Writer and Producer: Jonathan Sides

Coming soon to BBC Sounds, comedian Adam Hills tells the extraordinary story of the life, legend and death of Bruiser Brody, one of 1980s wrestling’s biggest stars and most enigmatic figures. Bruiser Brody was a classic villain of the ring and a foil for wrestling heroes like Bruno Sammartino and Ric Flair. When he was killed in the dressing room before a fight in Puerto Rico, it shocked the world of wrestling, and pulled back the curtain on a world full of rumour, fakeouts and mystery.