An asylum-seeker who smiled and stuck his tongue out to his friend while he was allegedly raping a woman on Brighton beach has denied “celebrating her humiliation”.
Ibrahim Alshafe, 25, is on trial alongside 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 Saturday 4 October last year.
Alshafe and Ahmadi are accused of repeatedly raping the woman behind the Brighton Beach Patrol hut, out of sight of security cameras, while Al-Danasurt filmed the incident.
Giving evidence at Hove Crown Court today (Wednesday 8 April), Alshafe said that he believed that the woman wanted to have sex with him, adding: “I swear I didn’t rape her.”
The Egyptian national previously told the trial the woman had approached himself and Ahmadi, kissing them and touching them so their understanding was she wanted to have sex.
In a video shown to jurors at Hove Crown Court, Alshafe is seen smiling with his tongue out and making a hand gesture towards his friend Al-Danasurt who was filming.
But he said he did not know he was being filmed, and instead was reacting to his friend making a hand gesture at him first.
Put to him in cross-examination by prosecutor Hanna Llewellyn-Waters KC that he was celebrating her humiliation, he replied: “This is not celebration, this a reaction to a gesture that was made to me.”
Speaking through an Arabic interpreter, he also told jurors: “I was happy, she was happy.”
Alshafe was also asked about a final third recording that has been shown in court of him slapping the woman in the face.
He said: “I wasn’t hitting her to punish her or torture her, I was playing with her.”
Jurors have been told the woman had been separated from her friends while on a girls’ night out, and prosecutors said the three defendants approached her when she was “staggering in the street” alone.
The court has heard that footage shows the woman falling down twice.
Asked if she was unconscious at any time, Alshafe answered no, and when asked if she was asleep at any time, he replied: “No, she was enjoying what we were doing.”
He said in the walk from the beach before and after the incident they were kissing each other.
At the time of the alleged offences, all three defendants knew each other and were residents at a Home Office-approved hotel accommodation for asylum-seekers near Horsham, jurors were told.
Giving evidence in court, Alshafe admitted he lied in his initial police interviews about not being in Brighton and said he was at his accommodation at the time of the incident.
On Wednesday, he said: “I was scared, I was terrified of what’s going on.”
Alshafe, of Lower Beeding, and Iranian national Ahmadi, of Crewe in Cheshire, have each denied two counts of raping the woman.
Egyptian national 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.
When there is irrefutable evidence
The punishment should be so severe it acts as absolute deterrent to anyone thinking they can get away with it.
More foreigners! Diversity is shite!
Yep, and its the women who are paying for it.
Thankfully not everyone is as intolerant of diversity as you. These individuals appear to be abhorrent and seem to deserve to spend a lot of time in jail before being deported with no rights of appeal. Despite your prostrations, the majority of sexual assaults in this country are carried out by British nationals. I would like to see him get that “playful” with me!
Ann, foreign born men massively disproportionately commit sexual crimes per capita, versus British born men. Of course overall numbers are higher of British perpetrators by sheer dint of the population demographics. But the per capita count is more relevant and shows that foreign born men are many times more likely to commit sexual crimes. You’re either being wilfully disingenuous or just pushing a ‘diversity’ agenda. Meanwhile whilst you play politics, many women of all races are being attacked. Diversity is not ‘our strength’ for these victims. It’s a risk to their health and life.
Not quite, Jay. Foreign-born men are more likely to be convicted of sexual crimes. However, BAME people are also far more likely to be victims, and victims tend to know the perpetrator.
You also have to take into account the disproportionality of reporting broadly, and the well-documented inherent biases in policing. And how a large percentage who don’t report at all, and worryingly, a significant percentage of victims who stated it was wrong, but don’t view it as a crime, according to the ONS data. Not to mention how little male sexual assault is reported.
There’s a lot more, but that is to say, you can’t conclude that the place of one’s birth is the primary factor here; the data simply doesn’t support that claim. There’s a lot more nuance to it.
Yes Ann, I know British nationals carry out sex assaults and we have trouble dealing with those but we do not need to import more! If these filthy foreign scumbags were not in this country this crime would not have happened!
The evidence base does not support that claim.
It’s quite simple really. If they are not here, crime not committed in this country.
Of course they will probably rape elsewhere it’s part of their culture!
And that’s textbook hate speech.
Benjamin, one thing you’re also missing here is the emotional reality behind why people are reacting so strongly—especially women. When a case like this comes up, it’s not an abstract policy debate for many; it taps directly into fears about safety, vulnerability, and lived experience.
You’re approaching it in a very clinical, detached way—focusing on labelling arguments and correcting phrasing—but that can come across as lacking empathy for the anger and fear being expressed. A lot of women aren’t just debating statistics; they’re reacting to something that feels personal and immediate.
That doesn’t justify sweeping generalisations or blaming entire groups—that still needs to be challenged. But if you ignore the emotional context and just police language, you risk sounding dismissive of the underlying concern rather than engaging with it.
If you want your point to land, it has to do both: push back on harmful generalisations *and* acknowledge why people—particularly women—are upset in the first place. Otherwise it just feels like you’re arguing the theory while others are reacting to the reality.
The irony of trying to explain how to speak to people, whilst getting an AI to speak for him is rather nonsensical, especially when JamesGPT fails to pick up on the contextual clues, nor can it tell if a comment is standalone or nested, nor does it have the long term nuanced memory of individuals, amongst the #37 times it has made a mistake, just from my counts. Not to mention JamesGPT will be sycophantic to please you, James.
It’s important not to be driven purely by the emotive, that’s how far right views are formed, such as the words by Jay, that have frequently borderlined into hate speech. Not helpful, and not welcome.
We’ve not discussed the human impact on the victims of these crimes, and I doubt anyone is in disagreement of the damage it causes.
Benjamin.
Perhaps find another topic for yourself ?
We know your very passionate about wheelie bins and pot holes . Some may think an expert.
Some people especially women have a right to vent anger on a subject that you will never be able to comprehend