Footballer Promes will appeal against assault conviction; Will attend appeal hearings

Dutch professional football player Quincy Promes will appeal against the District Court of Amsterdam’s ruling on Monday that convicted him of assaulting his cousin at a party in 2020. The court sentenced him to 1.5 years in prison for the attack. Promes did not attend the reading of the verdict on Monday, and has been absent for much of the trial, which upset the court. His attorney, Robert Malewicz, also told Parool that the football player will appear for the appeal.

"Our client has asked us to appeal," his attorney said to ANP. "We briefly discussed the verdict. He reacted with disappointment. We will study the verdict carefully, but he has already asked us to appeal,” he said.

"An important and principled argument is about the verifiability of the telephone taps," said Promes’s counsel. Malewicz was referring to tapped conversations and intercepted messages involving Promes.

His phone was tapped as part of a drug trafficking investigation. Those intercepted conversations may be used as evidence, the court ruled on Monday. But Malewicz does not think the court ruled correctly.

"The verdict has been postponed before and all of the new documents have been added. We have carefully examined them and the basis for the taps still does not appear from those documents, nor what the examining magistrate saw when he gave permission for the tap," said the lawyer.

Promes remained in Russia to avoid being arrested in a separate drug trafficking case regarding the import of hundreds of kilograms of cocaine. When asked whether the Netherlands will now submit an extradition request, a spokesperson for the Public Prosecution Service said that the verdict is not yet final.

"Given that an appeal is pending, an extradition request would be premature."

Promes was voted the most valuable player for the 2022-2023 season by fans of his current team, Spartak Moscow. His team finished in third for this year’s Russian Premier League.