Robihno, then playing for AC Milan, has not attended any of the hearings, having been sentenced in absentia.
The Court of Cassation, the last judicial instance in Italy, confirmed on Wednesday the sentence to nine years in prison for Brazilian soccer player Robson de Souza, Robinho, for gang rape committed in Milan in 2013, reported the victim’s lawyer.
The judges of the third criminal section, meeting in Rome, “deemed that the appeal filed by the player was inadmissible and that therefore the sentence is final,” the victim’s lawyer, Jacopo Gnocchi, told the press.
“A total of fifteen Italian magistrates have considered that the accusations have been widely verified. Our wish is that Brazil executes the sentence”, he stressed.
Robihno, who was playing for AC Milan at the time, did not attend any of the hearings, was sentenced in absentia and defended himself through a lawyer.
For the victim’s lawyer, who attended the hearing in Rome together with his client, it is necessary that the people, four Brazilian friends of the player, who participated in the gang rape, also be prosecuted.
“My client’s wish is that justice be done,” he said.
“She is moved and asked not to give statements,” he explained.
The 37-year-old Brazilian attacker, along with his friend Ricardo Falco, was sentenced in 2017 in the first instance by the Milan court to nine years in prison for group sexual violence against a young Albanian woman who was celebrating her 23rd birthday in a well-known local from Milan.
According to the complaint, Robinho, along with five other compatriots, made the young woman drink “to the point of rendering her unconscious and unable to resist” and then committed “sexual relations several times in a row” with her.
In December 2020, the Milan Court of Appeals confirmed the sentence for the player and considered that the footballer acted with “special contempt for the victim, who was brutally humiliated,” reads the sentence in the case.
In all these years Robinho has defended his innocence and has filed appeals against the ruling, until reaching the third and last instance this Wednesday. (D)
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