Sport

Reggae Boy Sinclair out on bail

Frank Sinclair - File

Cartagena, (ap)

THREE ENGLISH PREMIER League soccer players jailed in Spain for six days on charges of sexual assault were ready to return home today after being granted bail.

The Leicester City players -- Keith Gillespie of Northern Ireland, Frank Sinclair of Jamaica and Paul Dickov of Scotland -- were provisionally charged last Friday with sexual assault and breaking and entering at a hotel room in southeast Spain following a complaint by three women.

Returning home

They were brought to court for further questioning yesterday and a lawyer for the players, Ana Ruiperez, said that judge Jacinto Areste had decided to grant bail totalling euro288,000 (US$236,000) for all three players.

"They have been given bail," said Ruiperez. The players would have to go to the prison where they had been kept to sign papers for their release.

Leicester City chief executive Tim Davies said the players would return home later today and were not spending another night in prison.

They maintain their innocence of all outstanding charges, he said, adding that they expressed confidence in Spain's legal system, Davis said.

Not quite over

"It is not quite all over," he said. "They still face the charges."

The women live in Cologne, Germany. Two are originally from Kenya and one from Malawi.

Their lawyer said one of the women was held down by two of the players while another raped her.

The women said they met the players on Sunday, February 29 at an Italian restaurant and later at a bar in the La Manga complex hotel where the women and the team were staying.

The women waited until the following Tuesday to file the charges at Alicante airport -- from where they were to fly to Germany -- allegedly because there had been threats by the players.

In a front-page story Thursday, the British tabloid Daily Mirror quoted a Finnish soccer player as saying he had sex with one of the women in the same hotel room four hours before the alleged assaults.

Ville Lehtinen, a former Sheffield United player who now plays in Norway, said the woman took him to her room after flirting with him in a bar.

After they had sex, the woman "put back on her miniskirt and makeup and went back to the bar looking for footballers," Lehtinen was quoted as saying in an interview in Brodo, Norway.

Lehtinen said he was shocked when he recognised the woman in a newspaper photograph next to a story about the Leicester arrests. He said he called Spanish authorities to say he is prepared to testify on behalf of the players.

Under Spanish law, suspects in provisional custody may be held for up to two years, by which time the judge must release or indict them.