Seen in perspective, let's say from the perspective of Dani Alves, something did not add up in the Robinho case.
There are parallels between the two stories.
A soccer star, Brazilian in both cases, plunges into the night and there his sinister profile appears, a profile that leads to a rape that leads to a complaint and criminal proceedings.
Then both cases diverge.
Dani Alves (39), arrested in January, is being held without bail in Brians, and for now he will not be released from prison until the trial date, which could be delayed for more than a year.
Robinho, who is the same age as Alves, is sentenced to nine years in prison by Italian justice, but he lives in Brazil and has been there for ten years (since 2013, when he committed the already proven and convicted crime: the group rape of a young woman Albanian in a nightclub in Milan in 2013) wandering from one club to another before retiring as a footballer, scared, unable to fly abroad, determined to hide in his country, since there is no extradition agreement between Brazil and Italy.
So, until now.
Perhaps spurred on by the Alves case, the Brazilian judiciary has recently announced that it has activated the procedures to arrest the former striker and lock him up in a Brazilian prison, in whose cells he would spend the next nine years.
Maria Thereza de Assis Moura, president of the Brazilian Superior Court of Justice (STJ), confirmed the story yesterday. According to the judge, the Robinho case meets the requirements that would justify his arrest and his sentencing, even if it is in a Brazilian prison, as requested by Italy.
"Robinho had a fair trial in Italy and was regularly defended, and his sentence conforms to the strict framework of the law," said the magistrate, whose court will evaluate the technical elements of the process in Italy and will order, if appropriate, Robinho's prison.
(Brazil does not extradite a national, but it does accept the possibility that a citizen convicted abroad will serve his sentence in his country).
The Italian justice considers it proven that the Brazilian star, an early star at Real Madrid (2005 to 2008) and later a footballer at City, Santos and Milan (here, between 2010 and 2014), participated in the violation of a Albanian who had previously been forced to drink alcohol until she lost consciousness of herself.
