SAO PAULO.- The former Brazilian soccer player Robinho He spent his first night in prison in Brazilin compliance with a nine-year sentence for gang rape issued in Italy in 2017, prison authorities reported this Friday.
Robinho “entered this Friday, the 22nd, around 1 in the morning, to the Penitentiary II 'Dr. José Augusto César Salgado' in Tremembé”, about 150 km from the city of Sao Paulo (southeast ), indicated the prison administration of the state of São Paulo in an email to AFP.
The former forward, 40 years old, will complete an “observation regime of ten days in a cell measuring 2 meters by 4 meters.” Although the place has capacity for two people, it is “currently” alone, the entity said in another note.
He will be able to receive visits from family members once that period ends, which is part of the “inclusion process” into the prison system, during which he is given a basic personal hygiene kit, in addition to the prison uniform.
Tremembé is known as the “prison of the famous” in Brazil, because different personalities or perpetrators of high-profile crimes have served their sentences in its facilities.
Penitentiary II has a built area of more than 8,400 square meters and a total capacity for 584 prisoners, although as of Wednesday there were 434, according to the prison administration.
President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was going to be transferred to that place in August 2019 amid investigations and a conviction for corruption, handed down when he was out of power.
But his transfer was suspended by the supreme court and two years later he was acquitted.
Unlike a good part of Brazilian prisons, the Tremembé prison is not dominated by organized crime gangs, according to researchers.
Robinho's situation:
Robinho was arrested on Thursday by the Federal Police in the port city of Santos, where he lived.
The former 'Seleção' and Real Madrid attacker, among other clubs, was convicted in Italy for gang raping a young Albanian woman in a Milan nightclub in 2013, when he was an AC Milan player. . The sentence was ratified in 2022.
On Wednesday, the Superior Court of Justice of Brazil ruled that the former player had to pay the sentence in his country, as the Italian authorities had requested, since the Latin American giant does not extradite its citizens.
