An international arrest warrant against Robinho was issued on Tuesday by the Milan prosecutor’s office, which also requested the extradition of the Brazilian footballer, sentenced to nine years in prison for gang rape.
According to several reports, the former Real Madrid or Manchester City player is in Brazil. Italian justice hopes to succeed in extraditing him although the Constitution of Brazil prohibits the extradition of its nationals.
The international arrest warrant against Robinho still presents a risk for him because he could, in the event of a trip abroad, be arrested in a country having agreements with Italy providing for extradition, according to the media.
“For us it doesn’t matter if he serves his sentence in Italy or Brazil. The important thing is that he purges her, especially given the offense committed and to protect the women,” Jacopo Gnocchi, the victim’s lawyer, told AFP.
The fall of an ex-future big star
The Italian Court of Cassation confirmed in January the nine-year prison sentence for gang rape of a young woman. The facts date back to January 2013, when Robinho was playing at AC Milan.
According to media at the time, Robinho and five of his friends allegedly made a 22-year-old Albanian woman drink “to the point of rendering her unconscious and unable to resist”. They would then have had “multiple and consecutive sexual intercourse with her.”
A court in the Lombard city found him guilty in 2017 of gang rape on this young woman and sentenced him to nine years in prison. This sentence was confirmed on appeal in December 2020.
Robinho, considered at the time as a future big star – a few years before the advent of Neymar – never knew how to convert all the promises placed in him, and had already been briefly arrested in England in 2009, suspected of having raped a woman in a Leeds nightclub.