Rubiales to attraction superb for Hermoso compelled kiss
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After a keenly awaited trial that gripped the nation, Spain’s high prison court docket in February discovered Rubiales responsible of sexual assault for the kiss on the 2023 Women’s World Cup that generated world outrage.
The Audiencia Nacional additionally cleared him of a separate accusation of coercion for allegedly forcing Hermoso to downplay the incident afterwards.
Both events contested the sentence, which fell wanting the 2 and a half yr jail time period sought by prosecutors and infuriated feminist teams that condemned the punishment as too lenient.
Rubiales maintained the kiss was a consensual “peck” between buddies celebrating through the medal ceremony after star ahead Hermoso had simply helped Spain beat England within the last in Sydney, denying any coercion.
The court docket mentioned in an announcement on Wednesday that it had rejected the appeals of the defence crew and the prosecutors, sustaining the conviction and the superb.
“The kiss was not consensual” and Hermoso “expressed her displeasure with what happened, as she herself confirmed in the trial, as well as her teammates”, the court docket wrote.
“It cannot be said that a kiss in those circumstances was frequent or common or usual.”
It additionally confirmed that Rubiales, former girls’s nationwide crew supervisor Jorge Vilda and two former senior federation officers, Albert Luque and Ruben Rivera, had been cleared of the coercion cost.
Rubiales’s lawyer Olga Tubau instructed AFP that he would attraction the decision on the Supreme Court.
A separate request by the prosecutors to rerun the trial, notably as a result of doubts over the choose’s impartiality, was dismissed.
The court docket additionally maintained a ban on Rubiales from going inside a 200-metre radius of Hermoso and from speaking along with her for one yr.
The kiss sparked a worldwide uproar that compelled Rubiales to relinquish his put up, noticed him banned from all football-related exercise for 3 years and plunged the federation into a chronic interval of turmoil.
The affair made Hermoso, the all-time high scorer for the nationwide girls’s crew, an icon of the struggle in opposition to sexism and macho tradition in sport.
Rubiales can be embroiled in an investigation into alleged monetary irregularities totalling hundreds of thousands of euros associated to the Spanish Super Cup’s relocation to Saudi Arabia, which concerned an organization owned by Barcelona nice Gerard Pique.
Rubiales has dismissed the allegations as “falsehoods”.
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