Asylum seeker accused of ‘sticking out tongue’ to friend during alleged rape | UK | News

A man who smiled and stuck his tongue out at his friend while allegedly raping a woman on Brighton beach has denied he was “celebrating the woman’s humiliation”.

Asylum seeker Ibrahim Alshafe, 25, is on trial, along with co-defendants Karin Al-Danasurt, 20, and Abdulla Ahmadi, 26, for allegedly targeting the woman in a “cynical, predatory and callous” attack in the early hours of October 4 last year.

Alshafe and Ahmadi were accused of repeatedly raping the woman on the East Sussex coast, while Al-Danasurt filmed the incident.

Alshafe gave evidence at Hove Crown Court on Wednesday, April 8, saying he believed the woman wanted to have sex with him, adding: “I swear I didn’t rape her.”

The Egyptian national had previously told the court that the woman approached her and Ahmadi, kissed and touched them, making them think she wanted to have sex.

Jurors at Hove Crown Court were shown a video of Alshafe smiling with his tongue out and gesturing to his friend who was filming.

He claimed that he did not know he was being filmed and that he made the gesture in response to his friend who made the first gesture to him.

When cross-examined by prosecutor Hanna Llewellyn-Waters KC said he was celebrating his humiliation, he said: “This is not a celebration, this is a reaction to a gesture made to me.”

Speaking through an Arabic translator, he also told jurors: “I was happy, and so was he.”

Alshafe was also asked about another recording shown to the court of him slapping the woman in the face.

He said: “I wasn’t hitting him to punish or torture him, I was playing with him.”

The court heard the woman became separated from her friends on a girls’ night out and prosecutors said the defendants approached her as she walked alone “staggering down the street”.

The court was told footage showed the woman falling to the ground twice.

Alshafe stated that the woman was never unconscious or asleep and said, “She was enjoying what we were doing.”

He added that the couple kissed while walking towards the beach before and after the incident.

All three defendants knew each other at the time of the alleged offenses and were living in a Home Office-approved hotel for asylum seekers near Horsham, West Sussex, jurors heard.

Alshafe admitted lying to police in his first statement about not being in Brighton or where he was staying at the time of the incident.

“I was scared, I was horrified at what was going on,” he told the court on Wednesday.

Alshafe, from Lower Beeding, and Ahmadi, an Iranian national from Crewe in Cheshire, denied raping the woman twice.

Egyptian national Al-Danasurt, also from Lower Beeding, is jointly charged with all four rape charges as a secondary party who “encouraged the rape by his actions at the scene, including filming”, and has pleaded not guilty to all four charges.

He denies the fifth allegation that “private films were shared” without the complainant’s consent.

The charge relates to Al-Danasurt allegedly sending recordings of the alleged rapes to Ahmadi’s phone via Snapchat shortly after the incident.

The trial continues.