An asylum-seeker on trial for rape said that two police officers came to his at 3am and threatened him with seven years in prison if he didn’t sign a statement.
Abdulla Ahmadi, 26, one of three men on trial for raping a woman on Brighton beach last October, also accused the police of changing his statement.
At Hove Crown Court, he said: “They came to me at 3am in the morning and they said if you don’t sign this paper, you will be in prison for seven years.”
Ahmadi made the claim as he was cross-examined about his original account to the police and tried to explain why his evidence yesterday (Monday 13 April) was different to the statement that he signed last October.
Hanna Llewellyn-Waters, prosecuting, dismissed his claims and said that his lawyers had never mentioned the incident.
Miss Llewellyn-Waters said: “You’re lying, aren’t you?”
The Iranian national said: “I’m not lying.”
Miss Llewellyn-Waters said: “Did you tell your solicitor that two police officers turned up in the middle of the night and threatened you to sign a piece of paper.”
Ahmadi said: “Yes. I did tell my solicitor and he advised me to leave it for now – but I want the jury to know everything.”
She said: “No police officers turned up at your cell and threatened you, did they?”
He said: “I’m not making it up myself. I know it happened.”
Referring to one of his co-defendants, Ibrahim Alshafe, Ahmadi said: “Ask Ibrahim, he will say I was afraid. I was scared.”
Miss Llewellyn-Waters said: “Why are you smiling?”
He said: “I’m not smiling.”
She said: “You are entirely opportunistic, aren’t you? Lies trip out of your mouth, don’t they?”
The prosecutor showed the jury a handwritten copy of a prepared statement that was signed by Ahmadi on Wednesday 15 October and handed to police by Ahmadi’s solicitor early on in an interview that started at about 4pm that day.
The defendant also said that there had been misunderstandings with one of the interpreters who translated for him in his police interviews.
Ahmadi, of Wistaston Road, Crewe, Cheshire, and Ibrahim Alshafe, 25, an Egyptian, of Sandygate Lane, Lower Beeding, are accused of raping a 33-year-old woman behind the Brighton Beach Patrol hut on the morning of Saturday 4 October last year.
A third man, Karin Al-Danasurt, 20, an Egyptian, also of Sandygate Lane, Lower Beeding, filmed the attack and was alleged to have encouraged the other two men.
All three men are charged with raping the woman. Al-Danasurt is also charged with sharing intimate footage of what happened. They all deny all the charges.
Miss Llewellyn-Waters asked Ahmadi why there were differences in what he told the jury about what had happened on the beach and what he told the police.
She said: “Isn’t this the reality – that you and Mr Alshafe have realised there are discrepancies between your two sets of lies so you are now trying to shift your account to avoid the contradictions?
Ahmadi did not reply and Miss Llewellyn-Waters said that Ahmadi’s account was “a pack of lies”.
She told Ahmadi: “The three of you were entirely predatory towards her. You knew the state she was in. You got her on to the beach and did what you wanted to her.”
Ahmadi said: “No, we didn’t do that. I didn’t rape her.”
Miss Llewellyn-Waters said: “You degraded her and thought it was funny.”
He said that he didn’t – and he denied realising that she was drunk when she left Burger King, on Brighton seafront.
Miss Llewellyn-Waters said: “I’m going to suggest to you that she came out of Burger King and she was clearly alone.
“And you and Mr Alshafe at the very least spotted that and you decided to take her to the beach for your sexual gratification.
“Is this the reality, that you offered to help her find her friend because that would be a way of getting her on to the beach?”
Ahmadi replied: “No, it’s not right.”
And when they were on the beach, she said that they were “all boys together” and added: “You were egging each other on. You were like a pack.”
Miss Llewellyn-Waters asked about the moment when they met, saying: “You were standing on the street when a woman, a complete stranger, comes up to you and puts her hand on your penis under your clothing.
“You then say she pushes two men – you and Mr Alshafe – down on to the beach, so desperate is she to have sex with you two.
“Did you not think it strange that not once does she try to kiss you or touch you intimately on the way down to the beach?”
Ahmadi said that she did touch him once they reached the back of the Brighton Beach Patrol hut.
Miss Llewellyn-Waters said that the three men had come to Brighton on the bus from the Cisswood House Hotel, near Horsham.
None of them had had any luck with women that night – footage appeared to show them being ignored and rebuffed on a number of occasions. And yet the complainant approached them in the street to ask for sex?
She asked Ahmadi what was so attractive about taking the intoxicated complainant to the beach and what it was that they had in common – and she suggested that he was arrogant and entitled which he denied.
After several occasions on which he failed to answer the barrister’s questions, Miss Llewellyn-Waters asked: “Are you trying to avoid answering the question because you know your answer sounds ridiculous?”
He said: “No. I am not avoiding answering any questions.”
She said: “I’m suggesting to you that this evidence you are giving has been a pack of lies and that the three of you were entirely predatory to her.
“You got her on the beach and did what you wanted to her. You degraded her and thought it was funny, didn’t you?”
Ahmadi said: “No!”
The trial continues.
