The Court of Barcelona holds a hearing this Friday to decide on the appeal presented by the defense of the former FC Barcelona player Dani Alves against his preventive detention, in which he has remained since January 20 accused of raping a 23-year-old girl in the Sutton nightclub toilets.
The hearing began punctually at eleven in the morning, in the third section, behind closed doors and without the presence of the defendant, who remains incarcerated in the Brians 2 prison.
Alves’ defense, exercised by lawyer Cristóbal Martell, filed an appeal in May with the Barcelona Court against the decision of the head of the investigating court 15 to keep the Brazilian in preventive detention.
In her decision last May, the judge agreed to keep Alves in prison, in accordance with the criteria of the Prosecutor’s Office and the private prosecution, by questioning his latest exculpatory version and concluding that a high risk of escape persisted.
Martell has exposed out loud the arguments described in his appeal before the Court and in which he assures that his client will remain in Spain until the day of trial, which will surely take place this year, and that he has sufficient defense elements to avoid considering evade justice. He has also insisted on questioning the veracity of the victim’s story, stressing the story of the moments before entering the bathroom. The 23-year-old declared in court that those previous minutes in the private room she lived in a climate of “terror” and that she felt compelled to access, not knowing where that door led. However, Martell maintains that the images from the Sutton security cameras show a young woman, with her two companions, in a playful atmosphere.
The three magistrates will make a decision next week. The investigation is practically complete and the trial is expected to take place before the end of the year.
Alves had again asked the judge to release him on April 20, after appearing before the magistrate, at his own request, to give his fourth version of what happened at the Sutto nightclub in Barcelona on the night of December 30.
In that appearance, the former Brazilian player admitted for the first time that he had had vaginal sex with the complainant and insisted that they were consented to, which he tried to prove by providing an analysis of the images recorded by Sutton’s security cameras and that According to his version, they exculpate him.
However, the magistrate questioned the report that the defense presented as an expert and that, in her opinion, is nothing more than documentary evidence on the part of a “reconstruction” of what happened, given that “it is not even in charge of the court or carried out by the scientific police”.
Faced with the athlete’s argument that the victim could have felt annoyed with him for not having been “affectionate” after the relationship – and that is why he denounced him – the judge replied that it is “curious” that both did not speak to each other or ” almost” the look after leaving the bathroom, “if everything went as well as Alves points out”.
For the investigating judge, after the ex-soccer player’s last statement, the indications of criminality that involved him in the rape were maintained, for which reason she did not appreciate reasons to change his personal situation and agreed that he continue in prison.
Faced with this situation, Alves’ lawyers, Cristóbal Martell and Arnau Xumetra, appealed to the Barcelona Court asking for the provisional release of the former soccer player, arguing that it is “unthinkable” that he try to flee, given that he has a “life project” in Barcelona and has already sent their children to school in a center in the Catalan capital.
For the lawyers, “the escape adventure” of the ex-soccer player is unthinkable because the flight would mean “an unbearable burden for the subject and an unnecessary disgrace for himself and for the family and children” that Alves “does not want to provoke.”
In this way, Alves’ defense maintains that the risk of flight is “non-existent”.
In addition to denying the risk of flight, the bulk of Alves’ appeal focuses on questioning the victim’s version in light of the images captured by the nightclub’s security cameras in the moments before the former soccer player and the complainant entered. in the bathroom where the rape allegedly occurred.
The defense, which provided the court with a report that analyzed the images, claims that this document is of “unquestionable” utility.
