A taxi driver from Brighton and Hove has been cleared of raping a passenger after driving her home to Worthing.
Ajmal Hazraty, known to friends as AJ, was acquitted by a jury at Chichester Crown Court today (Thursday 12 August) after eight hours and one minute of deliberation.
Hazraty, formerly of Haven Way, Newhaven, and North Street, Portslade, had worked as an interpreter for NATO forces in his native Afghanistan where he was commended for his work.
At the start of his seven-day trial before Judge Anne Arnold, the jury were told that he raped a teaching assistant twice in her Worthing flat while she was drunk.
Hazraty, who turns 39 on Saturday, denied both charges, saying that what had happened was with the complainant’s consent.
In fact, he said, she had invited him in, having paid him compliments as he drove her back from Churchill Square, in Brighton, after a work Christmas party in December 2019.
Hazraty also said that he did not think that she was drunk, a belief that was supported by evidence given by colleagues from the school in Hove where the complainant was working.
Rowan Jenkins, prosecuting, told the jury that Hazraty’s version of events was “a fantasy”, with the cabbie claiming that he had been forced or persuaded by a “sex-crazed woman” who had “locked him in her flat”.
Mr Jenkins said: “This is just some extreme kind of porn fantasy.”
John Benson, defending, told the jury yesterday: “I was reminded of the 1966 song by Frank Sinatra, ‘Strangers in the night, exchanging glances, wondering in the night, what were the chances, we’d be sharing love before the night was through?’
“I’m not suggesting that this was love – but this is a case of strangers who engaged in sexual activity within an hour of meeting.”
He said that Hazraty’s decision to go into the complainant’s home to have sex was “at the very least reckless”.
But Mr Benson told the jury: “You’re not here to judge breaches of the taxi drivers’ code – or to sit in moral judgment.”
The complainant said that she had had five or six pints of San Miguel and a shot of Tuaca along with a meal at the Brighton Music Hall on Brighton seafront.
She had walked – unaided and without staggering – with some of her work colleagues to Churchill Square and was upset when they flagged down a taxi to take her home.
Mr Benson said that she had wanted to stay out with them but they had wanted her to go home and what followed was her reaction to feeling “unwanted and unloved”.
He said that she started flirting with Hazraty in his taxi and invited him up to her flat. She later claimed that she couldn’t remember much of what happened.
But she had to unlock her front door when Hazraty left an hour and a half later after, she said, he had raped her twice.
They had exchanged mobile phone numbers, with the complainant saying that she gave Hazraty her number to get rid of him.
But, Mr Benson said, “in summer 2019, the defendant gave her phone number to two men when she was out walking.”
They were “chance encounters”, he said, with “complete strangers” – and even though the complainant was in a relationship with a woman, she was also on a straight dating website.
Mr Benson said that the complainant, whose identity was protected in law, was embarrassed the next day but mostly said that she couldn’t remember what had happened “because she was so drunk”.
He told the jury that “she wasn’t so drunk” – although she may have been “disinhibited” after drinking over several hours some hours earlier.
He said: “The defendant’s account may seem strange. It may make for difficult reading. But it’s the truth. He didn’t refuse to answer questions. He gave his account, warts and all.”
She had the capacity to give consent and did so, Mr Benson said, and she had the capacity to recollect what had happened.
He added: “It’s an evening that she would prefer to forget. It’s her preference to forget. It’s not that she can’t remember.”
Hazraty was not only a man of good character, with no previous convictions, but an exemplary character and an upstanding member of his community since coming to Britain.
Mr Benson said: “It was a very unhappy experience but it was not rape.”
