They order Robinho’s arrest after he is convicted of rape

A judge of Brazil’s Supreme Court rejected the appeal filed by the former footballer on Thursday Robinho to avoid immediate arrest, sentenced to pay in the country the nine-year prison sentence for gang rape issued in Italy.

“I reject the request for a precautionary measure and the arrest order is maintained (…) so that he can begin serving his sentence,” Judge Luiz Fux, of the Federal Supreme Court (STF), said in the resolution.

Fux’s decision allows the 40-year-old former striker to be incarcerated in the next few hours, in compliance with the sentence issued on Wednesday by the Superior Court of Justice (STJ) for the events that occurred in 2013 when he was a Milan player.

Robinho is believed to be in a condominium in Guarujá (southeast), near the city of Santos, where he usually resides. Brazilian law prohibits arrests at night, except in flagrante delictobut it is not excluded that he will be handed over to the authorities this Thursday or Friday.

The defenders of the former Seleção and Real Madrid striker had submitted a habeas corpus petition to the STF on Wednesday evening to suspend the sentence until the options for appeal have been exhausted.

Robinho was convicted in Italy in 2017 of gang raping a young Albanian woman who was celebrating her 23rd birthday at a Milan nightclub. The ruling was ratified in 2022.

The former striker defends his innocence and claims that the relationship with the young woman was consensual.

Why Robinho was not extradited

Because Brazil prohibits the extradition of its citizens in its Constitution, the Italian justice system last year requested the execution of the sentence based on a Brazilian law that has allowed this since 2017.

The STJ examined the request for approval, which it approved by a large majority, without going into its merits or judging it again.

Journalists have been waiting for him since the early hours of Thursday morning in front of his secondary residence in the luxury Jardim Acapulco condominium in Guarujá, given the possibility that he is there and could be arrested.

As a condominium guard and a local real estate agent explained to AFP, Robinho usually goes “once or twice a month” to that closed place.

Other footballers have homes in this residential complex, such as Neymar and Marquinhos, current PSG player, indicated by the same people who did not want to identify themselves.

The judicial decision against Robinho coincides with the case of another Brazilian footballer, Daniel Alves, sentenced in February to four and a half years in prison for raping a young woman in a nightclub in 2022 in Barcelona.

A Spanish court on Wednesday authorized the full-back’s release from prison upon payment of a bail of 1 million euros (nearly $1.1 million), while appeals against his sentence will be resolved.

The court’s decision was criticized by Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

“The money that Daniel Alves has, the money that someone could lend him, cannot redeem a man’s offense against a woman he raped,” the president said.

Lula also called last week for Robinho’s imprisonment, believing he had to “pay the price for his irresponsibility” for an “unforgivable” crime.

The president of Palmeiras, Leila Pereira, questioned this Thursday the silence of the world of football in the face of both cases, which she considers “a slap in the face” to the women.

The councillor, one of the very few women at the helm of a first division club in the world, is in London at the head of the delegation of the Brazilian team which will play a friendly against England at Wembley on Saturday.

“Nobody says anything (…) This is a slap in the face for all of us,” he told the UOL portal.

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