Dani Alves will remain in prison until the trial for sexual assault on a young woman in a Barcelona nightclub is held. Justice has once again rejected a request from his lawyer for him to be released from prison, where he was admitted on January 20 of this year, accused of having raped a girl in the Sutton’s toilets in Barcelona, on December 30. .
After holding a court hearing last Friday, the Barcelona Court dismissed the appeal filed by the footballer’s lawyer and decided that the Brazilian player should remain behind bars. It is the second time that he has denied the release of the former Sevilla, Barça, PSG and Juventus, the same times as the investigating judge who is investigating his case. At each request from his lawyers to be released, justice (up to four times) has ruled against him and has decided that he continue in pretrial detention.
The judges of the Court of Barcelona believe that the “risk of flight remains and continues to be founded.” “We consider that no other precautionary measure can neutralize said risk with sufficient guarantees and his flight would prevent the holding of the trial that requires the presence of the person under investigation,” according to the magistrates in the order released this Monday.
Alves’ lawyer, Cristóbal Martell, assured in the hearing held on Friday that Alves will not flee Spain. And he put as an argument that his ex-wife and his two children have registered in Barcelona, coming from Brazil, to live near him. “The Spanish documentation and the registration of minor children in Spain seem to have been made ad hoc, practically the same day of the resolution that denies freedom, in order to be able to argue it before this Court,” justify the judges, who have not bought the argument of the defending. Both the Prosecutor’s Office and the victim’s lawyer opposed his release.
The victim claims that she was raped and beaten by the soccer player. Martell has tried to discredit her thesis and has gone so far as to affirm that her version “falls apart” in view of the videos examined. “We must remember that, even if it was a typical sexual courtship between two adults as the defense affirms, it cannot in any way justify a subsequent sexual assault,” the judges point out, throwing to the ground the line of defense of the soccer player’s lawyer.
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«Neither can the line of argument be founded to rule out the attack on the sexual freedom of the young woman in which she voluntarily entered the bathroom. Even if that were the case, it would not give Mr. Alves any concession to impose the sexual act” on the victim, they add. “What happened prior to entering the toilet does not determine that she had consented to the sexual relationship with penetration that is accredited, nor that she lied about it,” the magistrates warn. “As we already said, her statement has sufficient reliability features in this procedural phase,” they conclude. To try to prove that there was no rape, as the victim points out, but that they were consensual relations, as the player assures, his lawyers argued the “lack of lesions in the victim’s vaginal cavity”, or the “vaginal discharge” that they called “incompatible” with forced intercourse.
The prosecutor considers that the reasons for which provisional detention was agreed have not changed and there are many indications of the crime of sexual assault with penetration. For this reason, she asked that he continue in jail. In her opinion, Alves’ statement has been adapted to the evidence against him and even so it does not correspond to the traces located in the toilet or to the young woman’s knee injury. The Public Ministry points out that he does not have sufficient roots and that the risk of flight is very high, which forces him to maintain provisional detention.
The private prosecution agrees with the Prosecutor’s Office. He assures that the footballer’s version is not credible, since he said that he changed his story because of his concern that his infidelity would not be known. He considers that the flight risk remains intact and that the circumstances that determined the adoption of the precautionary measure have not changed.
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