Former Brazilian international footballer Robinho will go to prison. The former Real Madrid, AC Milan and Manchester City player was arrested on Thursday March 21 in Santos, a city in southeastern Brazil where he lives. He will be imprisoned to serve a nine-year prison sentence for a gang rape in Italy, police announced.
“The federal police issued an arrest warrant on Thursday evening (…) against Robson de Souza”, known as Robinho, Santos police announced in a statement sent to Agence-France-Presse (AFP) . The Supreme Court had previously rejected the final appeal requesting a stay of the former player’s incarceration
On Wednesday evening, in Brasilia, the magistrates of the Superior Court of Justice (STJ) decided by a large majority of nine votes out of eleven that the former Brazilian international could be imprisoned in Brazil, a decision “with immediate effect”.
The president of the STJ, Maria Thereza de Assis Moura, signed the document recording the decision of this high court on Thursday afternoon, allowing a Santos judge to issue a committal warrant.
The former international’s lawyers had presented to the Supreme Court a request for “habeas corpus” so that he remains at liberty until all possible remedies are exhausted.
Sentenced by an Italian court
Robinho, 40, was sentenced to nine years in prison by an Italian court in 2017 for gang rape committed in 2013, when he was an AC Milan player. He had already returned to Brazil at the time of the trial. The sentence was upheld by the Italian Court of Cassation in January 2022.
As the Brazilian Constitution does not allow the extradition of its nationals, Italian justice demanded that Robinho serve his sentence in his native country, a request accepted on Wednesday by the STJ.
The former striker with a hundred caps has always proclaimed his innocence, claiming to have had a “consensual” relationship with the victim, a young Albanian woman of 23, in a Milanese nightclub.
Thursday, Leila Pereira, president of the Brazilian club Palmeiras, criticized the silence of football’s governing bodies regarding the two major rape cases involving football stars in Brazil, Robinho and former full-back Daniel Alves, imprisoned in Spain .
“No one says anything (…). It’s like a slap in the face to all of us,” lamented, during an interview with the UOL news site, the woman who is one of the rare women at the head of a first division club across the world. .
Trained at the Santos club, like Pelé, Robinho played in major European clubs, such as Real Madrid, AC Milan or Manchester City, but his career never reached the hoped-for heights.
He ended it in 2020, after a final attempt at a comeback at Santos, his contract having been terminated before he even played again, under pressure from supporters and sponsors after his conviction for rape in Italy.