An asylum-seeker who said that he filmed an alleged rape by two others on Brighton beach because he was “trying to stop it” has been accused of telling a “pack of lies” in court.
Karin Al-Danasurt has been giving evidence over three days in a trial at Hove Crown Court over his part in the alleged rape in the early hours of Saturday 4 October last year.
The Egyptian national, 20, alongside two co-defendants – Egyptian national Ibrahim Alshafe, 25, and Iranian national 26-year-old Abdulla Ahmadi – allegedly targeted the woman in a “cynical, predatory and callous” attack.
Alshafe and Ahmadi are accused of repeatedly raping the woman on the beach behind the Brighton Beach Patrol hut while Al-Danasurt filmed the incident.
Today (Tuesday 7 April), during cross-examination, he denied spitting on the woman, calling her a “dirty bitch” and laughing or encouraging his co-defendants during the incident.
Jurors have been told that the woman had become separated from her friends while on a girls’ night out.
Hanna Llewellyn-Waters, prosecuting, said that the three defendants approached her when she was “staggering in the street” alone.
The court heard that footage showed the woman falling down twice.
Al-Danasurt told jurors that he filmed three videos of what happened to try to get Alshafe and Ahmadi to stop and also to “defend himself” so that he could tell someone what happened.
Before he filmed the incident, he said that he tried to “grab them away” but nobody responded to him, the court was told.
But Miss Llewellyn-Waters questioned his tone in the videos and asked him: “What was so funny?”
She also asked what he was doing in the three and a half minutes before he started filming and said that Al-Danasurt was telling a “pack of lies” and just was looking after himself.
She added: “I suggest what you’ve done in your evidence is put on a performance with a string of lies to hide your true involvement.”
The defendant replied: “What I said is totally the truth. I’m not lying. I’m telling the truth.
“If I wanted to lie, I would have said I didn’t go to Brighton from the beginning.”
The court had heard that Al-Danasurt, while he was filming, said that “God will expose you” to the two men/
These were “powerful” words, he said, but Ms Llewellyn-Waters said that an interpreter had said that the phrase can be used in a dismissive way.
She said: “You found it entertaining, didn’t you?”
He replied: “No. There was no entertainment at all.”
He has also been accused of slapping the complainant which he denies.
The court was told that in Ahmadi’s statement to the police, he said that Al-Danasurt began slapping the woman and spat in her mouth after the incident.
But today, Al-Danasurt told the court: “No. That has never happened.
“He said that before because I gave the video to the police and once he knew I gave the video to the police, of course, he will accuse me and he will say everything against me.”
The court was also told that Al-Danasurt bought juice and croissants for his co-defendants after the ordeal and, around 12 hours later had a barbecue with them, despite him alleging that Ahmadi had threatened him that evening.
Of the barbecue, he said: “It was their idea. They told me: ‘Come with us to do this.’ I didn’t refuse.”
A video of Al-Danasurt wearing filtered sunglasses in a selfie and a lit barbecue hours after the alleged rape has been shown in court.
At the time of the alleged offences, all three defendants knew each other and were residents at the Cisswood House Hotel, which was a Home Office-approved hotel for asylum-seekers, in Lower Beeding, near Horsham.
Ahmadi, of Crewe, in Cheshire, and Alshafe, of Lower Beeding, have each denied two counts of raping the woman.
Al-Danasurt, also of Lower Beeding, is jointly charged on all four rape counts as a secondary party “encouraging the rape by his actions at the scene, including filming it” and has pleaded not guilty to all four charges.
He denies a fifth count of “sharing intimate films” without the complainant’s consent.
The charge relates to an allegation that Al-Danasurt sent recordings of the alleged rapes to Ahmadi’s phone via Snapchat shortly after the incident.
The trial continues.
