Former soccer player Robinho was arrested this Thursday, March 21, by the Brazilian police to pay a nine-year prison sentence for gang rape issued in Italy in 2017.
“The prisoner will undergo an examination at the IML (Legal Medical Institute), a custody hearing and will be sent to the penitentiary system.“, indicated the Federal Police of the City of Santos, near Sao Paulo, in a note sent to AFP.
The former striker, 40, was taken by agents to the authority’s headquarters in that port city, according to local media, minutes after the Brazilian Supreme Court denied an appeal filed by his defense.
His lawyers appealed last Wednesday to the Supreme Federal Court (STF) in the hope that it would suspend the imprisonment order until the possibilities of appeal were exhausted.
But Judge Luiz Fux dismissed him and ordered him to begin “serving his sentence,” as dictated on Wednesday by the Superior Court of Justice (STJ) in response to an Italian request to standardize the sentence in Brazil for events that occurred in 2013. .
The former Seleção and Real Madrid attacker was convicted in Italy in 2017 for having gang-raped a young Albanian woman who was celebrating her 23rd birthday in a Milan nightclub, when he was an AC Milan player. The sentence was ratified in 2022.
The former forward defends his innocence and alleges that the relationship with the young woman was consensual.
Silent stop
As Brazil prohibits the extradition of its citizens in its Constitution, the Italian justice system last year requested the execution of the sentence based on a Brazilian law that has allowed it since 2017.
The STJ examined the request for approval, which it approved by a large majority, without going into the substance of the matter or judging it again, and ordered that it be detained “immediately.”
Journalists waited since early Thursday morning outside Robinho’s secondary residence in the luxurious Jardim Acapulco condominium in Guarujá, near Santos.
Finally, the former soccer player was arrested in the port city, the Federal Police informed AFP, without revealing images of the detainee.
“Slap” to women
The judicial decision against Robinho coincides with the case of another Brazilian footballer, Daniel Alves, sentenced last February to four and a half years in prison for having raped a young woman in a nightclub in 2022 in Barcelona.
A Spanish court on Wednesday authorized the full-back to be released from jail if he pays bail of €1 million (almost US$1.1 million), while appeals against his sentence are resolved.
The court’s decision was criticized by the Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
“The money that Daniel Alves has, the money that someone could lend him, cannot redeem the offense of a man towards a woman he raped“said the president.
Lula had also asked last week for Robinho’s imprisonment, considering that he had to “pay the price for his irresponsibility” for an “unforgivable” crime.
The president of Palmeiras, Leila Pereira, questioned this Thursday the silence of the football world in the face of both cases, which she considered “a slap in the face” of women.
The board member, one of the very few women in charge of a first division club in the world, is in London as head of the delegation of the Brazilian team that will play a friendly against England at Wembley on Saturday.
“No one says anything (…) This is a slap in the face for all of us,” she told the UOL portal.
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