Former Man City and Brazil star Robinho is filmed being arrested in his homeland… as he will serve nine-year prison sentence after being convicted in 2017 of gang r@pe in Italy | HO

Former Brazil and Manchester City player Robinho has been arrested in Brazil to serve a nine-year prison sentence for r@pe.

Robinho, 40, was arrested at his flat in Santos on Thursday.

He was found guilty in Italy in 2017 for his part in the gang r@pe of an Albanian woman at a night club in Milan in January 2013.

The former Premier League player, whose real name is Robson De Souza, was one of six men found guilty of assaulting the Albanian woman.

In 2020 an appeals court confirmed the conviction and the Supreme Court in Rome dismissed his final appeal against the conviction in January 2022.

Robinho na sede da PF em Santos após mandado de prisão pic.twitter.com/aJlIn19V3B

— ge (@geglobo)

March 21, 2024

Former Brazil and Man City star Robinho has been arrested to serve a nine-year prison sentence for r@pe

Robinho was arrested in Santos on Thursday and will be behind bars for his part in a gang r@pe

He and five others were found guilty for the 2013 r@pe of an Albanian woman in a Milan nightclub

Brazil’s Superior Court of Justice (BSCJ), according to Globo, came to the landmark judgement to imprison him on Wednesday after Italian authorities had asked to extradite the 40-year-old in 2022.

Italy requested that he serve his sentence in his homeland after failing to get him extradited.

Nine of the court’s 15 ministers had voted in favour of the decision to incarcerate the footballer in Brazil.

On Thursday, his request to pause his detention was snubbed by a Supreme Court judge.

The Brazilian constitution does normally not normally permit the extraditions of native criminals. He could have faced arrest if he had travelled outside of Brazil.

Robinho claims he is innocent and has been living in Brazil for the past seven years.

Robinho, who was 28 and was playing for AC Milan at the time, admitted during his appeal to having ‘contact’ with the woman, but the Brazilian insisted it was consensual.

The Milan Court of Appeals found Robinho had ‘belittled’ and ‘brutally humiliated’ the victim as it upheld his original sentence in December 2020.

This photo shows a person believed to be Robinho in a police vehicle following his arrest

Italy could not get him extradited so they requested that he serves his time in prison in Brazil

Nine of the court’s 15 ministers voted in favour to incarcerate him in his home country of Brazil

This is the entrance to the Federal Police headquarters in Santos. Robinho was arrested on Thursday

Intercepted phone calls between the Brazilian and those allegedly involved in the assault were used as key evidence in his initial conviction.

Robinho had said: ‘It makes me laugh because I’m not interested, the woman was drunk, she doesn’t even know what happened.’

The forward had secured a transfer back to Santos in 2020 where he was handed a contract that was worth minimum wage.

But he was forced to tear up the contract amid outcry over his signing, with a major sponsor pulling its support for the football club.

The winger came through the Santos academy, where he was seen as one of Brazil’s rising stars.

He managed 100 caps for the Brazilian national team and went on to score 28 times for them

He would go on to play 137 matches for Real Madrid, 53 for Manchester City and 144 for AC Milan during his playing career.

City paid a then-British transfer record of £32.5million for him in September 2008, which remained the highest fee paid by a British club until Liverpool bought Andy Carroll for £25m in January 2011.

He also made 100 appearances for the Brazil national side.

Robinso wound down his career with stints in Brazil, China, and Turkey.