A Spanish court has ruled that the five members of the so-called “Wolf Pack” who were convicted of sexually abusing an 18-year-old woman during the running of the bulls festival in Pamplona in 2016 can remain at liberty pending an appeal to the supreme court.

There was outrage last April when judges dropped rape charges against José Ángel Prenda, Alfonso Cabezuelo, Antonio Manuel Guerrero, Jesús Escudero and Ángel Boza and instead convicted them of the lesser charge of sexual abuse, sentencing them to nine years. The accused appealed but the sentence was confirmed in December.

Now judges in Navarra have voted by two to one that the five do not present a flight risk and can remain on bail until the supreme court ruling. According to the victim’s lawyer, there is almost no likelihood of the court overturning the verdict or reducing the sentence. No date has been set for the hearing.

While on remand the five suspects, who include a soldier and a member of the civil guard and are all from Seville, have to report to the court once a week and are prevented from visiting Madrid, the victim’s hometown.

This latest ruling is expected to provoke further protests at what many see as the kid glove treatment of the five – whose WhatsApp group was called La Manada, or the Wolf Pack – on the part of the authorities.

All five had unprotected oral, anal and vaginal sex with the victim whom they had only met 20 minutes earlier, and filmed the assault on their phones. They stole the victim’s phone before abandoning her in a hallway.

The judges ruled in April that, as she remained passively inert throughout, no violence was used and therefore the charge of rape did not apply. One judge even argued that they should only be charged with the theft of her phone.

Thousands of people took to the streets to protest at the verdict but moves to have the sentence increased to 14 years at a second hearing in December, on the grounds that aggression was used during the assault, were rejected.