The prosecution Barcelona has asked the judge to keep the former FC Barceloba player, Dani Alves in provisional prison while investigating his alleged sexual assault on a woman on December 30, 2022 at the Sutton nightclub on Tuset street in Barcelona. The prosecutor in the case has taken a position in this regard before the appeal that the Brazilian star’s defense filed last week asking to be provisionally released with other security measures while the case continues to be investigated.
In the opinion of the prosecutor, the reasons that led the judge to send him to prison are still valid: he sees “rational indications” that he committed the alleged violation and, in his opinion, the risk of escape persists, “without alternative measures to imprisonment proposed by the defense mitigate such aims”.
Therefore, according to sources from the public ministry, the prosecution rejects the precautionary measures of passport withdrawal, daily appearances in court and use of a telematic bracelet that proposed his defense. The private prosecution, exercised by the lawyer Ester García on behalf of the victim, must now present her allegations. Later, the player will refer the case to the Third Section of the Barcelona Court to decide whether or not to release Alves or impose some measure on him.
clues more than enough
The judge maintained in her prison order that “there is more than enough evidence” to consider the demand for a crime of sexual assault, specifically rape. The magistrate argued in imprisonment of the soccer player in the seriousness of the penalty that this type of crime entails and, above all, the risk of flight. In this sense, he alluded to the fact that, in his opinion, the player does not have any relevant roots in Barcelona, nor in Spain, which make one think that he will stay in this country after learning of his accusation of rape and the high prison sentences associated with it ( up to 12 years in prison). The togada came to describe the athlete’s flight risk as high.
In addition to the player’s contradictions during his statement (he changed the version three times) and the evidence that, in his opinion, corroborates the evidence against Alves, the judge argued that the player has “high economic capacity”, not only because of what he received from the Mexican Pumas team, from which he was fired after being arrested and imprisoned, but also from other income.
Precisely this thesis on the economic capacity of the player, is one of the elements on which the appeal of Alves is based, defended by the lawyer Cristóbal Martell. In his letter, the lawyer recalled that the player has seen his income decrease as a result of the decision of the Mexican team to fire him, but also because the brands that supported his professional career were turning their backs on him and were rescinding their sponsorship contracts or left in suspense. However, the player has other businesses in Brazil, a country that he does not usually extradite nationals.
The cameras recording
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In the appeal, the Brazilian star clings to defend his innocence in the recording of the surveillance camera of the private room of the Sutton nightclub where in a private bathroom he allegedly sexually assaulted the young complainant. The letter argues that the images captured in the private room place some of the statements made in the prison order in “severe quarantine or value doubt”, and that it offers credibility and credibility to the victim’s statement.
Last Friday, the two friends who accompanied the victim the day the alleged sexual assault occurred in the bathroom of a private room at the Sutton nightclub endorsed the woman’s version and, even, both assured before the judge that Alves was he had touched them. The judge offered one of them the possibility of filing a complaint, although she rejected it, prioritizing what had happened to her friend, that is, her alleged rape.