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Ex-Real Madrid and Manchester City star Robinho to serve Italian gang rape sentence in Brazil
Robinho's attorney revealed that he would surrender to the authorities when officially notified about the decision.
Judges in Brazil ruled on Wednesday that former Real Madrid striker Robinho will need to serve his nine-year prison sentence in Brazil, upholding his rape conviction. The trial took place in Brazil's Superior Court of Justice, the country's top court for non-constitutional matters, and saw a majority rule that the former player will need to serve his sentence in Brazil.
In 2017, a court in Milan found Robinho and five other Brazlians guilty of gang raping a woman in 2013, after plying her with alcohol in a discotheque. An appeals court in 2020 confirmed the conviction, which was further validated by Italy's Supreme Court in 2022.
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Brazil doesn't not extradite its citizens. Last year, Italy requested from Brazil that Robinho should serve his prison sentence in his home country.
Robinho's attorney revealed that he would surrender to the authorities when officially notified about the decision. The Brazilian court did not examine the rape conviction, concentrating only on seeing if the Italian sentence was valid in Brazil.
Recently speaking to TV Record, Robinho said, "It was consensual. I never denied it (the encounter). I could have denied it because my DNA was not there, but I'm not a liar. I played for four years in Italy and I got tired of seeing stories about racism. The same people who do nothing about racism, which I repudiate, are the ones who condemned me."
Robinho's case and that of former PSG and Barcelona star Dani Alves has sparked plenty of criticism over the failure of authorities to deal with violence against women. In February, former Brazil international full-back Alves, 40, was sentenced to four-and-a-half years in prison for raping a woman in a nightclub in Barcelona. On Wednesday, a court in Spain ruled he would be released from jail pending an appeal in a one-million-euro bail agreement denounced by the victim's lawyer as 'justice for the rich.'
