Court allows Dani Alves to leave prison in advance of appeal hearing
A Spanish court decided on Wednesday that Dani Alves could leave prison if he pays a bail of €1m (£850,000) and hands over his passports while awaiting the appeal against his conviction for raping a woman in Barcelona.
The former Brazil and Barcelona player was found guilty of having raped the woman in a nightclub in 2022 and sentenced to four years and six months in prison. During the three-day trial he denied wrongdoing.
Alves has been behind bars since being arrested in January 2023. His previous requests to be released on bail were denied because the court deemed him a flight risk. Brazil does not extradite its citizens when they are sentenced in other countries.
To now go free, in addition to the bail money, the 40-year-old Alves is required to hand over his Brazilian and Spanish passports and is prohibited from leaving the country. He also cannot come within 1,000 metres of the victim or try to communicate with her and must make weekly check-ins at the courthouse. He still has a residence near Barcelona.
The decision came a day after a hearing at which Alves told the court via video conference from prison that he had no intention of fleeing the country, according to his lawyer, Inés Guardiola.
Guardiola and the state prosecutor have appealed against the conviction. His defence is seeking his acquittal, while the prosecutor wants his prison sentence increased to nine years. The victim’s lawyer wants him jailed for 12 years. There is no date yet for the new trial at a higher court in Barcelona. After that, it can then go to the supreme court in Madrid.
The panel of judges at the provincial court in Barcelona was split on the decision, two to one. The judges in favour of granting Alves bail said that they believed the flight risk had diminished, given that Alves responded to police summons when he was arrested while visiting Spain. The other judge disagreed, saying he was still able to flee despite the restrictions placed on him.
Another factor cited by the two judges was that according to Spanish law a person cannot be kept in preventative detention for more than half the period of their prison sentence while awaiting an appeal. In Alves’s case that leaves him just over a year before he would reach the midway mark of two years, three months, and the appeals could easily take longer. Once his appeals are exhausted, and if his conviction is maintained, then depending on the final sentence he could go back to prison.
As part of his conviction, the court ordered Alves to pay €150,000 in compensation to the victim, banned him from approaching the victim’s home or place of work, and from communicating with her by any means for nine years.