Footballer Quincy Promes to stay in jail pending appeal hearings

Former Netherlands international footballer Quincy Promes has lost his battle to be released from jail so he can resume his career while he awaits the outcome of his appeal against two prison sentences.

Lawyers for the 33-year-old said he had received an offer from a club in Lithuania with a guarantee that he would fly back to the Netherlands for the appeal court hearing.

Promes was jailed in absentia for six years last February for his part in smuggling 1,300kg of cocaine into the Netherlands via Antwerp. He was also given a sentence of one and a half years for stabbing his nephew at a family gathering in 2020.

At the time the sentences were handed down Promes was playing in Russia for Spartak Moscow and beyond the reach of the Dutch authorities, as the country has no extradition treaty with the Netherlands.

The decision to keep him in prison is a serious blow to Promes's chances of playing professional football again, after he spent last season at UAE club Dubai United.

He won the last of his 50 caps for the Netherlands against the Czech Republic in 2021, when the team was knocked out of the European Championships.

Promes was arrested in June after moving to Dubai and extradited two weeks ago. He has denied all the charges against him.

His lawyer, Cem Polat, asked the appeal court in Amsterdam to release the player pending his court hearing, arguing that he did not pose a flight risk.

Promes, who attended the hearing, would be unable to pursue his career as a professional footballer in hiding and his potential employer had guaranteed he would be put on a plane to the Netherlands when the case was due to be heard.

“My ambition is to return to the highest level,” he told the court. “And that was with Spartak Moscow. My location was always known, I proudly posted every goal I scored. I was never on the run.”

But the judges disagreed, saying Promes was facing lengthy sentences if his conviction was upheld and he had previously escaped justice when he left Ajax to join Spartak Moscow shortly after he was arrested in connection with the stabbing incident.