The Spain Prosecutor’s Office appealed on Thursday (6) of the sentence imposed on former Cartola Luis Rubiales and asked for a new trial to be made. The main allegation is that impartiality was lacking in the magistrate who condemned the former president of the Spanish federation a fine as punishment for the kiss given in player Jenni Hermoso after the World Cup final.
In a document to which AFP had access, prosecutor Marta Durántez requests a new trial chaired by a “unlawful, biased -looking magistrate,” he denounced that he was prevented from asking countless questions and that many evidence was ignored by the judge.
Magistrate José Manuel Fernández Prieto did not “have any mention in the sentence to several fundamental questions on which evidence was presented at the time of the trial, as if such evidence had not existed,” the accusation said.
In addition, Durántez accuses the judge from preventing the “accusation of formulating questions pertinent to several of the witnesses,” before enumerating all “occasions when prosecutors were inadmissible.”
The facts narrated in the prosecution took place on August 20, 2023, during the medal delivery ceremony after Spain was world champion in Sydney. At the time, Rubiales forced a kiss on the player’s mouth, which caused a worldwide scandal and eventually rushed the leader’s resignation.
In the judgment of the trial that occurred from February 3 to 14, near Madrid, the judge declared Rubiales guilty of sexual assault and imposed a fine of 10.8 thousand euros (R $ 67 thousand)) and prohibition to approach or contact the victim for a year.
The magistrate, however, acquitted him of the coercion offense, understanding that there was no violence or intimidation in the pressures about the female team striker to minimize the gesture.
Both the defense of hermoso and Rubiales himself also announced that they would appeal the sentence.
The prosecution had requested a sentence of two and a half years in prison (a year for the kiss and a year and a half for the coercions) to the former cartola who presided over the Spanish Federation from 2018 to 2023.
