Former Manchester City and Real Madrid player Robinho was arrested in Brazil on Thursday after losing a last-minute court bid to delay serving his nine-year prison sentence for raping a woman a decade ago.
Supreme Court Judge Luiz Fux rejected Robinho’s request for a stay and ruled “the detention order is maintained... so that he can begin serving his sentence.”
Robinho was found guilty by an Italian court in 2017 of taking part in the gang rape of an Albanian woman celebrating her 23rd birthday at a Milan nightclub four years earlier.
Photo: AP
The former Brazil international, now 40, lost an appeal in 2020 and had his sentence upheld by Italy’s highest court in 2022, after which Italian prosecutors issued an international arrest warrant.
Brazil does not extradite its nationals so Italy asked that Robinho be made to serve his jail sentence in his home nation.
A court in Brasilia agreed on Wednesday, by nine votes to two, and on Thursday court president Maria Thereza de Assis Moura signed a document paving the way for a warrant to be issued for Robinho’s incarceration.
Journalists flocked to his luxury condominium in Guaruja, near Santos, but his arrest was not caught on camera. The Globo network later aired a short video showing him inside a police precinct.
Robinho was to be taken to a prison in Tremembe, about 150km southeast of Sao Paulo, the nation’s most populous city, a federal police officer told journalists.
His lawyers had filed a request to the Supreme Court to allow him to remain free while challenging the latest court decision.
That was rejected.
The player, who protests his innocence, told Brazilian network TV Record in an interview broadcast on Sunday that the sex had been consensual and he accused the Italian justice system of racism.
According to the complaint, Robinho and his coaccused had made the young woman drink “to the point of rendering her unconscious and unable to resist,” and then had “sexual relations several times in a row” with her.
A Milan appeals court in March 2021 found that Robinho had acted with “special contempt for the victim, who was brutally humiliated.”
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