An asylum-seeker accused of rape on Brighton beach with two co-defendants has told a court that he called one of the other men an “animal” and pushed him away after he spat on the woman.
Iranian national Abdulla Ahmadi, 26, is on trial with Ibrahim Alshafe, 25, and Karin Al-Danasurt, 20, both Egyptian nationals, for allegedly targeting the woman in a “cynical, predatory and callous” attack.
Ahmadi and Alshafe are accused of repeatedly raping the woman on the beach behind the Brighton Beach Patrol hut in the early hours of Saturady 4 October last year while Al-Danasurt filmed them.
At Hove Crown Court today (Friday 10 April), Ahmadi said that what took place on the beach was consensual and the woman did not show any anger until Al-Danasurt spat in her face.
He said that he stopped having sex with the woman and pushed him.
Al-Danasurt has previously denied in his evidence to the jury that he spat on the woman.
Ahmadi, speaking through a Kurdish Sorani interpreter, said: “I saw that was very disgusting. I was very angry.
“I pushed him and I swear to him and told him he was an animal because (of) what he did. Normal people are not doing that.”
He told jurors that it did not matter what your nationality was, “it is not right to act like that against her”, and Al-Danasurt’s behaviour made him leave the beach.
After they left the beach, he said that Alshafe and the woman were sitting on a bench “cuddling” and “kissing” when Al-Danasurt spat on her again.
Ahmadi said: “As soon I saw that I pushed his hand and I pushed back. Even (though) I don’t know a lot of English I said sorry to her.”
He said that when he said goodbye to the woman, she kissed him and he repeatedly told her “sorry, sorry”.
Asked what he was sorry for, he replied: “Because of Karin’s behaviour.”
Jurors have been told that the woman had become separated from her friends on a night out.
The prosecutor, Hanna Llewellyn Waters, said that the three defendants approached her when she was “staggering in the street” alone.
The jury was shown footage of the woman falling down while with Ahmadi and Alshafe on the seafront.
Ahmadi said, in his evidence, that the woman approached him and kissed and touched him and then also kissed Alshafe and then spoke in English.
He told the court that he heard her say the word “sex” and she took the two of them down to the beach.
Asked what he was thinking on their walk over, he said: “We went to the seaside for sex.”
At the time of the incident, all three defendants knew each other and were living with other asylum-seekers at the Cisswood House Hotel, funded by the Home Office, in Lower Beeding, near Horsham.
The court was told that Ahmadi and Alshafe met each other on a small boat from France to Britain while Alshafe and Al-Danasurt were room-mates at the hotel.
Ahmadi told jurors that he left Iran because he was working for a Kurdish opposition party and that this had been discovered by the security police who went to look for him at his home and asked his mother where he was.
He said: “If I hadn’t left, I would have been arrested and been killed.”
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”. He has pleaded not guilty to all four charges.
He denies a fifth count of “sharing intimate films” of the attack 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.
