Barcelona (EFE) security of the reserved exculpate him.
As reported to EFE by legal sources, the document was presented this morning before the investigating court number 15 of Barcelona, which is investigating the footballer for allegedly raping a 23-year-old girl in a bathroom in a Sutton private room on the 30th of December.
Alves’s defense, carried out by the lawyers Cristóbal Martell and Arnau Xumetra, has again requested the provisional release of the footballer, which the Barcelona Court already rejected in February, after he appeared again before the judge last Monday, to which he insisted that he had consensual sex with the complainant and that he lied in his first statement to hide his infidelity from his wife.
In the letter, the soccer player’s lawyers attached an expert report that they have commissioned on the images captured by the security cameras of the private room and which, according to the defense, would show that the defendant and the victim were flirting before the events, dancing and drinking together, and that she voluntarily entered the bathroom after Alves did.
To these arguments, the defense adds that the footballer has sufficient roots in Barcelona, where he has a home in his name, and that he does not have the economic capacity that the investigating judge attributed to him for the companies he has in his name in Brazil.
On February 21, the Court of Barcelona already rejected those same arguments adduced by the defense in its appeal -based on the roots and on the images of the security cameras- when it decided to keep the footballer in preventive detention, appreciating a “high ” flight risk and consider that the evidence that accuses him is “severe” and “various”.
On this occasion, the request for release uses, as a new element, Alves’ statement last Monday before the investigating judge, in which the defendant maintained his fourth version of the facts and clarified that in his previous statement he had lied to save his marriage.
In that last appearance, the soccer player admitted for the first time that he penetrated the victim vaginally – after biological tests found traces of semen in her private parts – and again questioned his credibility, stating that he believes that the young woman denounced him because she was offended because he was not affectionate after the sexual relationship in the bathroom.