By Miguel Rapetti
A Barcelona court on Monday declined the possibility that the trial for sexual harassment and abuse faced by former soccer player Dani Alves would be annulled under the argument that the justice system investigated the Brazilian behind his back for more than a month, which in his opinion violated their human rights.
Hours before the start of Alves’ trial against him, Inés Guardiola, Alves’s lawyer, filed an appeal to annul the trial, adding, in addition to the human rights argument, that the former FC Barcelona was subjected to a “parallel trial.” ” by public opinion.
Guardiola wanted to focus his allegations on detailing the string of fundamental rights that he believes have been violated in the case, among them the presumption of innocence and a trial with all guarantees, something that the local justice system did not buy.
In addition, the lawyer has presented to the court the circumstances of the arrest of Alves, who was arrested in his lawyer’s office in Barcelona on January 20, 2023 despite the fact that, he insisted, he had been under investigation since the night of the facts, when the victim filed the complaint against him on December 30, 2022.
“It was an investigation behind his back,” complained the lawyer, who highlighted that this prevented Alves from exercising his right to defense and, among other issues, from undergoing a test to prove that on the night of the events he was under arrest. The effects of alcohol.
The lawyer also believes that the judge who investigated the case violated Alves’ right to defense because he was prevented from accessing the case before his arrest, the police reports and documents that were provided to him when he was already in the cell after his arrest. They were mutilated and their defense was given barely two hours to prepare their statement in the court on duty.
“He never had the opportunity to defend himself effectively during the investigation,” highlighted the lawyer, who also denounced that a second medical examination of the victim was not authorized, as they had requested.
The lawyer has insisted that in this case Alves’s presumption of innocence has been violated because he has been subjected to a “parallel trial”, through a “media campaign” and a “tendentious submission”, with a “constant and incessant” trickle of information to present him as a “sexual offender”, causing the “social conviction” that he is guilty.
This parallel trial includes presumptions about his financial capacity, which according to the lawyer is not as comfortable as the press proclaims but, on the contrary, Alves suffers from a “stifled economic situation”: he has a debt of more than half a million dollars with the Treasury. , a lien of more than $150,000 dollars and his bank balance is just over $70,000 dollars.
The result of the trial, which began this Monday, could lead to up to a total of nine years in prison at the request of the local Prosecutor’s Office, when he is accused of raping a 23-year-old girl in the bathroom of a booth at the Sutton nightclub in Barcelona
Keep reading:
- “He touched my intimate area”: Shocking testimonies on the first day of the trial against Dani Alves
- Dani Alves faces four possible scenarios in his sexual assault trial
- Barcelona Court rejected Dani Alves’ trial being held behind closed doors