BARCELONA-. The trial of Dani Alves concludes this Wednesday with the expected declaration of the Brazilian football playeraccused of having allegedly raped a woman in a nightclub in Barcelona, and who will now have the opportunity to present his version in court.
The third – and last – of the scheduled sessions of the trial will start at 2:00 p.m. GMT in the Barcelona Court, where the former Barça and PSG player, 40, must arrive again in the police van that brings him from the Spanish prison where he has been held for more than 12 months.
But, unlike the previous two days in which he listened in silence and with a serious gesture to the more than twenty witnesses summoned to try to clarify what happened in the early hours of December 31, 2022, now he will be able to speak.
Accused of having raped a young woman in the bathroom of a reserved area of the Sutton nightclub in Barcelona, Alves has changed his version on several occasions since the investigations began.
After stating in a video that he sent to television that he did not even know the complainant, the former Brazilian international ended up admitting that they had had relations, although consensual, and that if he had lied at the beginning it was to try to save his marriage.
This Wednesday, several experts who analyzed evidence are also scheduled to appear and, after Alves’s statement and the final reports, the trial must conclude pending a sentence that could take weeks.
“Disconsolately”
For the Prosecutor’s Office, the facts constitute an alleged crime of “sexual assault with penetration” and ask for a sentence of nine years in prison for the player, in addition to the payment of compensation of 150,000 euros (about $162,000) to the woman and another decade of supervised release after serving the sentence.
From the beginning of the process, the Public Ministry gave credibility to the story of the complainant, who testified on Monday with a series of measures to protect her anonymity and separated by a screen to avoid a “visual confrontation” with the accused.
The two had not met since the night in which, after meeting in the exclusive area of the nightclub, the soccer player invited her to go to another booth with a small sink that she did not know about.
In that cubicle, according to the Prosecutor’s indictment, Alves attacked her and forced her to have sexual relations, despite the woman’s attempts to prevent it, who experienced a “situation of anguish and terror.”
The young woman’s two companions that night, a friend and a cousin, confirmed in court on Monday the state of shock in which she left the bathroom, as well as the consequences that she carries after the events.
The woman’s friend stated that Alves showed a “slobbery attitude” from the beginning and recalled how the girl asked him “crying inconsolably” to leave after leaving the bathroom, telling her that the accused had done her “a lot of harm.”
Possible drunkenness
During the trial, several of the police officers and employees of the premises who treated the complainant – currently undergoing psychological treatment – also testified, which influenced the state of “shock” in which they found her, as well as her initial reluctance to report the facts.
“She told me that they weren’t going to believe her, that she had entered voluntarily, but then she wanted to leave and couldn’t,” said one of the people in charge of the room.
The testimonies from Alves’s entourage, on his side, coincided in highlighting that the footballer had drunk a lot that night.
His still wife, Joana Sanz, explained that the accused returned that morning to their house near Barcelona “smelling of alcohol”, after a long day with friends.
“When he entered the room, he collided with several pieces of furniture and collapsed on the bed,” said the Spanish model.
In the same sense, his friend Bruno, the only one who accompanied Alves in the nightclub, asserted that the footballer had “drank a lot”, which did not prevent him, according to him, from maintaining a “respectful chemistry” with the complainant.
Dani Alves, one of the most successful footballers in history, played for clubs such as Sevilla and Juventus Turin, in addition to being part of Messi and Guardiola’s successful Barça team. When the events occurred he was briefly in Barcelona, after returning from the World Cup in Qatar.
After his entry into prison in January 2023, his team at that time, the Pumas of Mexico, terminated his contract.
Source: AFP
