Robinho must serve rape sentence in Brazil, court says

On Wednesday, Brazilian judges upheld former AC Milan and Brazil striker Robinho’s rape conviction and ordered him to fulfill his nine-year prison sentence in Brazil.

The Superior Court of Justice (STJ), Brazil’s highest court for non-constitutional disputes, ruled that Italy’s ruling was legitimate in Brazil by a majority vote.
In 2017, a Milan court found Robinho and five other Brazilians guilty of gang raping a woman in 2013 after serving her drinks in a discotheque.

The conviction was confirmed by an appeals court in 2020 and upheld by Italy’s Supreme Court in 2022.

Robinho, 40, whose full name is Robson de Souza, lives in Brazil and has consistently denied the claims.

Brazil seldom extradites its people, therefore Italy requested last year that Robinho complete his prison sentence in his own country.

Jose Eduardo Alckmin, Robinho’s attorney, stated that following the trial, Robinho will surrender to police once he was officially notified of the verdict.

The Brazilian court did not renew debates concerning the rape conviction, instead focused on whether the penalty imposed in Italy was lawful in Brazil.

However, in an interview carried on Sunday by a local TV station, Robinho expressed hope that the court would consider the merits of the Italian case.

“I was unfairly convicted in Italy for something that did not occur,” he told me.