New opportunity. Former Barça player Dani Alves will appear next Monday before the Investigating Court 15 of Barcelona at his own request. The magistrate agreed to it after the Brazilian’s lawyer, Cristóbal Martell, requested a new statement to seamlessly expose his version of what happened at dawn on December 31 at the Sutton nightclub in Barcelona. It will be almost the last stage of an investigation that is practically finished and that for the moment keeps the player in prison accused of a crime of sexual assault,
Alves will go to court, as the Ser advanced, to insist on his version that the relations with the complainant were consented as it shows that she voluntarily entered the bathroom in which the events occurred and in which they were 16 minutes. He will also argue that the atmosphere between the player, his companion, the victim and her two friends was relaxed before and after the alleged aggression, as shown by the images captured by the cameras of the nightclub.
In the appeal filed by Alves’ lawyers against his pretrial detention and which was rejected by the Barcelona Court, it was indicated that the complainant, her cousin and a friend entered this private room, known as ‘La Suite’ around 3:20 a.m. at dawn and that for 20 minutes they were “chatting in a playful and festive way” with the player and his companion “surrounded by many people in an open space”. For the lawyers, this environment “is far from being the context and scene of environmental intimidation” that the courts mark to “bend the capacity of the victim.”
In this sense, they detail that the woman “closed the door” of the bathroom after she entered, since around 3:42 the player is seen in the images accessing the bathroom and two minutes later the complainant comes after speaking with the two friends and the waiter without the player “clearing the way or opening the door. The images speak for themselves.”
In addition, the appeal points out that in this “moment prior to the sexual encounter in the tiny cubicle or bathroom in which one entered first and then the other. And that the complainant describes and expresses as lived in a climate of terror, dread or microcosm of domination, a scenario that the images deny in the most radical way”. This will be the line of defense that Alves will explain in his statement next Monday in court.
Last January, when he appeared before being provisionally imprisoned, the Brazilian came to offer up to three different explanations for what happened at the disco, starting with denying knowing the woman and ending with the fact that she consented to him. fellatio However, the numerous existing evidence in the procedure contradicted these statements, they have endorsed the violation denounced by the victim and they corner Alves.
The latest proof is that the DNA of the semen found in the bathroom of the nightclub, the place where the events allegedly took place, in her genitals and in her clothes coincides with that of the player, for which reason the version of fellatio Therefore, the player wants to explain that the relationships were consented. The statement comes after Alves has been in pretrial detention for almost three months, given the risk of flight as confirmed by the Barcelona Court, and after the court has received numerous evidence.
In this sense, the magistrate has on the table the police reports, the extensive footage of the security cameras that captured the moments before and after the alleged assault, the testimony of numerous witnesses, the confirmation that the DNA found in the victim is of the Brazilian, the medical reports of the examination of the woman after the complaint and the one that determines the veracity of her version or that her fingerprints are all over the bathroom.
For now, it will be necessary to see if next week’s statement can change the investigation open against Alves, since everything indicates that he will have to sit in the defendant’s dock, possibly at the end of this year, accused of sexual assault, for which could face a sentence of between 8 and 10 years in prison.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
