Migrant in UK town just six weeks before rape accusation | UK | News
One Afghan A court heard the migrant had been living in the English town for just six weeks before he was accused of subjecting a 12-year-old girl to a series of sexual assaults. Ahmed Mulakhil told Warwick Crown Court He had arrived in the country approximately four months before his arrest.
Addressing the jurors through a Dari translator on Tuesday, February 3, Mulakhil said that he did not force the girl to do anything, did not threaten her family, and that he filmed some of what happened because the girl insisted.
The 23-year-old, of no fixed address, admits oral rape but denies two other charges of rape, two counts of sexual assault, child abduction and taking indecent photographs of a child. Another defendant, 24-year-old Muhammed Kabir, denies intentional strangulation, committing a crime with intent to commit a sexual offense and attempting to take a child.
The hearing was told Mulakhil engaged in sexual activity with the complainant in a grassy area on a housing estate in Nuneaton, Warwickshire, last July.
Mulakhil said he applied for immigration because of the “problems” he experienced in Afghanistan and had been living in Nuneaton for about six weeks.
He said that around 17.20 on July 22, he noticed his friend Kabir talking to the 12-year-old boy. Mulakhil told the jury that he did not see Kabir strangling the girl and neither did he. He believed her when she claimed she was 19.
She told the court: “He was insisting that he wanted to come to my house. I couldn’t speak English well so I was trying to explain to him that it wasn’t possible.”
“He was following me. When I got there (the grassy area), I sat down. We sat together for a few minutes and I told him that you should go back to your house and your mother, but he didn’t accept it.”
Mulakhil claimed that after using Google Translate to communicate with the girl, he began touching the girl’s arms and the sexual activity lasted about five seconds.
Asked about the indecent images found during the police investigation, Mulakhil said one of them was taken with a phone in his hand, “but his hand was also nearby.” He added: “He wanted to take photos… videos. He was very insistent.”
Jurors were previously told that Kabir, also of no fixed abode, had urged police to check CCTV footage to clear his name.
During closing evidence in the Crown’s case, prosecutor Daniel Oscroft read a translated transcript of Kabir’s telephone conversation with an interpreter during his efforts to contact police.
The court heard Kabir tell the translator: “The girl came and left with my friend. I told her, ‘Don’t come to me, please go away, don’t come close.’
“Tell them (the police) to look at the camera. Tell them my heart is exploding. I was brought here innocently. I sent him away. I was saying, ‘Don’t come close to me, you’re a minor.’ Tell them I didn’t do anything wrong.”
The trial continues.
