Former Barcelona player Dani Alves has seen his sexual assault conviction overturned on appeal.
A Spanish court on Friday ruled that the original verdict presented "inconsistencies and contradictions".
In February last year, Alves was convicted of raping a woman in the restroom of a Barcelona nightclub in 2022 and sentenced to four and half years in prison. He had always denied wrongdoing, claiming sex with the woman was consensual.
Spain in 2022 overhauled its laws to make consent central to defining a sex crime, and Alves’ trial last year was the first high-profile case help since the changes.
In its ruling overturning the verdict, the Catalan high court said the alleged victim's testimony lacked reliability when referring to facts that could be objectively verified through video recordings, "explicitly indicating that what she recounted does not correspond to reality".
Alves had already been released from prison on a €1 million bail while awaiting the result of his appeal. He may now leave the country as the appeal court lifted all travel restrictions.
The decision can still be appealed before Spain's Supreme Court.
Additional reporting by Reuters.
