Former Footballer Robinho to Serve Prison Time in Brazil for Rape Conviction

Former national and Milan footballer, Robson de Sousa, known as Robinho, will face prison time in Brazil. The ex-player was arrested by the federal police after Supreme Court (Stf) judge Luiz Fux dismissed the athlete's defense request to suspend the execution of a nine-year sentence for rape, handed down by the Milan court in 2017, which will be served in the South American country as per the decision of the Brazilian judiciary. The athlete was with his family in his villa in Guaruja, on the coast of Sao Paulo, when he was reached by agents to be taken first to the federal police headquarters in Santos and then, after some formalities, transferred to a penitentiary that will be indicated by the authorities. Robinho's defense argues that the decision of the judges of the Supreme Court of Justice (Stj) to ratify the Italian sentence is unconstitutional and, therefore, hoping for a possible review of the measure by the Stf - the last possible judicial recourse - had asked to postpone the transfer to prison. Dani Alves, the former player sentenced to four and a half years: he raped a girl in a Barcelona nightclub. The arrest is plausible that the Supreme Court will agree with us, but to be able to present the appeal we must wait to read the reasons for the sentence and we do not know when it will be possible. For this reason, considering that the footballer "has no intention of evading justice", it is right that he waits in freedom for the final decision of the Court, the lawyer José Eduardo de Alckmin had declared to the press. However, the request, submitted with "urgency", was entrusted to the evaluation of the on-duty judge Fux, who quickly ruled against the request. The Stj magistrates had decided for the immediate imprisonment considering the long years that Robinho has spent in freedom after the final conviction in Italy, from which he had escaped by moving to Brazil, knowing that the law of the South American country prevents the extradition of its citizens. The footballer was definitively convicted in Italy for the gang rape of a young Albanian woman that occurred in 2013 in a Milan nightclub. The victim was "unconscious" due to alcohol abuse. Robinho and the five accomplices have always claimed that the victim was consenting.