Soccer player accused of rape released on €10,000 bail
A Portuguese soccer player accused of raping a 17-year-old girl in Athens last weekend was released from pretrial custody on Thursday after a court ordered him to pay 10,000 euros in bail but attached no additional terms.
Ruben Semedo, 27, testified to an investigating magistrate and a prosecutor for more than two hours, responding to accusations he plied the 17-year-old with alcohol at an eastern Attica bar and then took her to his home in Glyfada, southern Athens, where he and a 40-year-old Nigerian man raped her. The Olympiakos defender denies the charges.
“I believe that the innocence of my client has been proven. No evidence emerges, neither from the forensic report nor from the contradictory statements of the witnesses,” said Marizana Kikiri, one of Semedo’s lawyers, in comments to reporters outside the courthouse. “He claims his innocence. The decision of the prosecutor and the investigator says it all,” she added. “There is nothing to substantiate that a rape occurred,” she insisted.
The 17-year-old also testified on Thursday, though details of what she told the magistrate and the prosecutor in the case have not been made public. Her mother also reportedly spoke to the court.
Semedo’s 40-year-old co-defendant, described as a sports manager, is due to testify on Friday.
