A Barcelona court approved the release of Brazilian footballer Dani Alves on Wednesday March 20. Sentenced to four and a half years in prison for rape, the player will be able to get out on payment of a bail of one million euros. This decision was immediately denounced by the plaintiff’s lawyer, Me Ester Garcia, who said she was “very surprised” and “very outraged”. She announced that she would appeal against a ruling “which is not in accordance with the law”, seeing it as “justice for the rich”.
To justify its decision, the Barcelona court highlighted the numerous conditions governing the possible release of the former star of the Brazilian selection, Barça and Paris Saint-Germain, who appealed his conviction .
At the start of the afternoon, it was unclear when Alves or his entourage would be able to pay this sum of one million euros, and therefore when he would be able to leave prison. In addition to the bail of one million euros, his two Spanish and Brazilian passports will be withdrawn and “he will be prohibited from leaving the national territory,” the court underlined in a press release.
Risk of leak raised
In detention since January 20, 2023, Dani Alves will also have to “appear every week” in court and respond “to all legal summons” between now and his new trial, the date of which is unknown. He will also be prohibited from approaching “within one kilometer of the home” or “the place of work” of the victim and “from communicating with her by any means”, underlines the court.
Dani Alves requested his provisional release on Tuesday during a brief closed session before the Barcelona court. The prosecution opposed this request, considering that the risk of flight was significant. Heard by videoconference from the Barcelona prison where he is detained, the former Seleçao full-back assured the court that he would not flee, adding that he believed in justice, according to judicial sources.
His lawyer, Inés Guardiola, who had proposed the payment of a bail of 50,000 euros in return for the release of her client, had recalled, for her part, that the former player had already served a quarter of the sentence pronounced in first case. An argument taken into account by the court, which had until now opposed the various requests for the player's release precisely because of the risk of flight, considered high given his financial means.
“Justice is patriarchal and class-based.”
This final decision is “a scandal (…) we let a person go free when we know that he can collect the million euros in no time,” declared the plaintiff’s lawyer, Ester Garcia, on Catalan radio RAC1.
The radical left Sumar party, a member of Madrid's ruling left-wing coalition, also sharply criticized the decision. “Dani Alves can wait at home for the final sentence for rape because he has a million euros. Justice is patriarchal and class-based. That's enough ! “, launched Sumar in a message on the social network X.
Dani Alves was sentenced on February 22 to four and a half years of imprisonment for the rape of a young woman on the night of December 30 to 31, 2022 in a nightclub in Barcelona, a sentence much lower than the requisitions of the prosecution, which demanded nine years in prison.
The court also forced the player to pay 150,000 euros to his victim and imposed five years of supervised release on him after his release from prison, as well as a ban on approaching his victim for nine and a half years.
During his trial, the footballer assured that the sexual relationship was consensual, but his defense was weakened by his numerous changes of version, pinned down by the prosecution.
