The Brazilian Robson de Souza, Robinho, 40, sentenced to nine years in prison for raping a woman in 2013 in Italy, was arrested this Thursday night, the day after a court in Brazil ordered his immediate imprisonment to serve the sentence imposed on him. by an Italian court in 2017 and confirmed until all resources were exhausted. The decision of the Superior Court of Justice responded to a demand from the Government of Italy. The former Real Madrid, Milan and Manchester City footballer was arrested at his home in Santos, on the coast of the State of São Paulo, and taken to a police station in the city to undergo a medical examination and a hearing. custody. At dawn, he was transferred to the Tremembé prison, 150 kilometers from the city of São Paulo, known as the famous prison.
The player, who proclaims his innocence and says that the sentence in Italy was racist, had exhausted his last resort hours before, a habeas corpus presented before the Supreme Court of Brazil.
The prison where he has begun to serve his sentence has about 300 inmates, cells for six people and most importantly, unlike a good part of Brazilian prisons, it is not dominated by organized crime gangs. The majority of prisoners are convicted with high school or university studies. Several famous convicts have passed through it.
Since the Brazilian Constitution vetoes the extradition of its citizens and Robinho fled Italy before being tried, he was convicted in absentia and during all these years he has lived free despite the conviction for a gang rape. The sentence handed down in Italy in 2017 and confirmed in 2021 and 2022 in the European country maintains that the footballer and several of her friends sexually abused a 22-year-old woman in a nightclub after getting her drunk. Only Robinho and another of the accused were identified, tried and convicted. The rest escaped.
After the conviction in Italy, Robinho continued with his professional career in Brazil until 2020 when a Brazilian media published an audio that appeared in the case summary in which the player laughed at the rape victim. At that time he had just been hired by Santos, the club that discovered him, Neymar and the legendary Pelé. Both parties decided to suspend the contract signed six days earlier. Robinnho did not play professionally again.
The decision of a Spanish court to release Daniel Alves on conditional release if he manages to deposit a million euros in bail and the imprisonment of Robinho have received extensive media coverage in Brazil, but almost generalized silence in official football. The most notable exception, the president of Palmeiras, Leila Pereira. “No one says anything, but I, as a woman here at the head of the delegation [de la selección masculina, que está de gira por Europa], I have to take a position on the cases of Robinho and Daniel Alves. This is a slap in the face for all women, especially the case of Daniel Alves, who paid for his freedom. Each case of impunity is the seed of the next crime,” she told UOL Pereira, the only woman at the head of one of the great football clubs in the world.
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