The jury has gone out in the trial of three men charged with raping a woman on the beach in Brighton.
They retired at lunchtime today (Monday 20 April) at Hove Crown Court to consider their verdict.
All three men deny the charges, with two saying that the woman consented and the other saying that he filmed what happened not as an accessory but to try to stop his friends.
They started having sex with a drunk woman who had become separated from her friends just minutes after “alighting” on her, a jury was told.
The jury was shown security camera pictures of the woman staggering out of Burger King on Brighton seafront just before 5.40am on Saturday 4 October last year.
Moments later, two of the men were filmed by another camera as they walked with her on the other side of the A259 King’s Road before turning down a ramp to the lower promenade.
And at 5.46am the third defendant was shown joining the other two behind the Brighton Beach Patrol hut where the pair had sex with the woman.
The third man, Karin Al-Danasurt, filmed Abdulla Ahmadi and Ibrahim Alshafe as they had sex with the woman.
Hanna Llewellyn-Waters, prosecuting, told Hove Crown Court that Al-Danasurt said to the police in his interview that the woman was drunk to the point that she could not stand on her own.
Miss Llewellyn-Waters said that there was no CCTV (closed-circuit television) camera coverage of the area behind the sea side of the Beach Patrol hut.
But the footage, filmed by Al-Danasurt on his phone, showed Alshafe “smiling and sticking his tongue out” during the attack. Ahmadi appeared to be trying to hide his face.
Alshafe, 25, and Al-Danasurt, 20, both Egyptian nationals, and Ahmadi, 26, an Iranian national, each deny rape. In addition, Al-Danasurt denies sharing the footage.
The three short videos that he filmed were shown to the jury yesterday (Tuesday 17 March).
Miss Llewellyn-Waters told the jury: “As the camera angle changes, Ahmadi covers his face with his hand and he, you may think, may be trying to shift his head so he is not seen on camera.
“Shortly after that, as she (the complainant) is motionless, Mr Alshafe lifts his head up to face the camera and poses for it, smiling and sticking his tongue out.”
When the alleged offences took place, all three defendants knew each other and were living at the Cisswood House Hotel, in Lower Beeding, near Horsham. The hotel was approved by the Home Office for housing asylum-seekers, the jury was told.
Alshafe and Ahmadi both arrived in Britain on a small boat on Thursday 19 June last year, three months before the alleged rapes. Al-Danasurt entered the country on Friday 11 October 2024, the court was told.
Ahmadi left the hotel the day after the alleged rapes and moved to an address in Crewe, Cheshire, where he was arrested on Sunday 12 October, the court was told.
The move had not been approved by the Home Office and Ahmadi had been marked as “absconding, self-departing” from the Cisswood House Hotel.
On Monday 13 October, Alshafe and Al-Danasurt were arrested after police were notified that they had returned to the Cisswood House Hotel.
DNA samples were taken from all three defendants – and DNA from both Alshafe and Ahmadi matched samples taken from the complainant’s body during a forensic medical examination, jurors were told.
Forensic evidence related to Al-Danasurt was inconclusive, Miss Llewellyn-Waters said.
Jurors were told that the woman, who is in her thirties, had been on a night out in Brighton with friends but became separated from them. Her identity is protected by law.
Judge Christine Henson told the jury to beware of stereotyping and said that this included not judging “lifestyle choices” such as having voluntarily been drinking alcohol – as the complainant had in this case.
The judge warned them not to “fall into the trap” of thinking someone is “less worthy of belief” if they had drunk alcohol or, in some cases, taken illegal drugs.
She added: “It is important not to assume that that means they were looking for or willing to have sex.”
Excellent police work.