Former Brazilian soccer participant Dani Alves has had a rape conviction in opposition to him quashed upon enchantment.
The highest court docket in Spain’s Catalonia area stated it overturned the unique ruling in Alves’ case pronouncing it had offered “inconsistencies and contradictions”.
The previous Barcelona participant used to be discovered accountable of sexual attack in February final yr and used to be sentenced to 4 years and 6 months in jail. He denied wrongdoing throughout the three-day trial.
It used to be dominated that Alves raped the sufferer in a rest room at an upscale Barcelona nightclub early on New 12 months’s Eve in 2022.
On Friday, the highest court docket in Catalonia dominated that there used to be “inadequate proof” to rule out Alves’ presumption of innocence.
Within the judges’ ruling, they wrote that the testimony of the sufferer “differed significantly” from proof of video photos taken ahead of the lady and Alves entered the toilet the place she stated he pressured her to have intercourse with out her consent.
In March final yr, Alves paid €1m (then £930,000) in bail to be launched from jail whilst interesting the rape conviction.
The previous Barcelona footballer paid the sum and passed over his Brazilian and Spanish passports after prosecutors had argued he used to be a flight possibility.
Alves, now 41, had ahead of that been saved in prison from January 2023 till March 2024.
He might now depart the rustic because the enchantment court docket lifted all go back and forth restrictions.
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The verdict can nonetheless be appealed ahead of Spain’s Ideal Court docket.
The Alves trial used to be the primary high-profile case since Spain overhauled its regulations in 2022 to make consent central to defining a intercourse crime in keeping with an build up in protests after a gang-rape case throughout the San Fermin bull-running competition in Pamplona in 2016.
The regulation popularly referred to as the “best sure method sure” regulation defines consent as an particular expression of an individual’s will, making it transparent that silence or passivity don’t equivalent consent.
